Informational query
-
Hello,
In an informational query can the answer people are looking for have multiple intent or will it always have 1 intent ?
For example New York, the intent is probably where ?
On a longer query such as "Provence bike tour" what is the intent ? Where, what, Why, How to, when ?
Thank you,
-
Thank you for your detailed answer.
-
On Google, query-spaces can become ambiguous. For some keywords, Google know that there is a very strong affinity in terms of the user's search-intent
For example, if the query is: "properties to rent in Camden, London" - then it's almost certain that the searcher is looking for a new place to live and wants to see rental property listings
If on the other hand, the query is something like "science", that's extremely broad. Do the users want science news? Maybe to pick up a sciences degree? Do they want to know the basic principles of science (e.g: the scientific method?)
The answer to your question is variable. It's not that Google 'always' assumes one meaning, or 'always' assumes multiple meanings. It depends upon the specific search-query, and the resources available within the appended query-space
You'll find that some query-spaces are very, very noisy and not really very helpful - because there's just too many search audiences 'competing' (through their clicks and queries) for 'control' of the query-space. Some query-spaces are like a battleground, others are much more straight-forwards and easy to interpret
As a general rule of thumb, if a search query returns results predominantly from one type of site - all about the exact same thing, that query-space is 'clean'. If you search for something and the results are messy and all over the place, then the query-space is 'noisy'
It's easier to optimise for clean query-spaces, but because they are clean your competition will be harder to overcome. In a noisy query-space, it's harder to write that one piece of content that addresses everyone perfectly - but competition is usually not as stiff (because most people can't be bothered optimising for noisy query-spaces, you can't do it with crappy textbroker articles - it takes real thought!)
So there you go. You should now have a lens to analyse Google's results with, and decide upon your SEO / content implementation
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I markup additional information about a person that is not visible on my site?
Hello, I want to mark up my site and I don't know if I can markup up 'CEO' for a person if it doesn't say 'CEO' on my site. In general, does everything that I markup have to be visible on my site? Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Leebi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Leebi0 -
Why does Google display the home page rather than a page which is better optimised to answer the query?
I have a page which (I believe) is well optimised for a specific keyword (URL, title tag, meta description, H1, etc). yet Google chooses to display the home page instead of the page more suited to the search query. Why is Google doing this and what can I do to stop it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Ecommerce - Go to Basket 302 query
Hi I have done a site crawl and there are a lot of 302's on the 'Go to Basket' link when customers go through to pay. Should these be updated to 301's? On just the first part of the link so nothing after the ? /OrderCalculation? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Canonicalisation query
Hi, I'm in a bit of a quandary. I have this page: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/ As you can see we have provided filters to only display Fixed rate, Tracker rate, Variable rate, High LTV and HMO products for users. At the moment our canonical tags all point to the main Comparison page, but in order for the search feature to work dynamic urls are created. So for example on the fixed rate page (https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/) when a user puts in their search criteria the url ends up looking like this: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/?PrevTab=HMO&PVal=250000&Amt=100000&Tme=20&SearchId=5508 Now, my quandary is this - should I make the canonical tag for the filtered products (fixed, tracker etc) like this: https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/fixed-rates/ or should I keep it at https://www.commercialtrust.co.uk/compare-products/ ? The comparison page shows all products, ordered by the lowest rate and with a pre-set search, limited to 20 - so not all products will be displayed on the page - and some products (like the high LTV ones) are not displayed on the main comparison landing page anyway... Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Internal Links Query - What should be use as anchor text
Hello All, We are looking at our internal links and most of them say "More" or "View All" The "more" anchor Text links - are usually positioned on the Body Content as we only display a portion of the content and then the user clicks more to see all the content ? - Should we be changing the "More" Text to something more keyword /phrase friendly i.e " more information about carpet cleaning" or "more information on Tool hire" or would that be deemed as spammy ? thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Increasing Search Queries
Recently I had a drop in the over all number of search queries my website was ranking for (about 50%) on October 5th. I did not lose rankings for my target keywords. How can I regain these lost opportunities?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raph39880 -
Transactional vs Informative Search
I have a page that id ranking quiet good (Page1) for the plural of a Keyword but it is just ranking on Page 3 for the Singular Keyword. For more then one Year I am working on Onpage and Offpage optimization to improve ranking for the singular term, without success. Google is treating the two terms almost the same, when you search for term one also term 2 is marked in bold and the results are very similar. The big difference between both terms is in my opinion that one is more for informational search the other one is more for transactional search. Now i would be curious to know which factors could Google use to understand weather a search and a website is more transactional or informative? Apart of mentioning: Buy now, Shop, Buy now, Shop, Special offer etc. Any Ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimCaffe0 -
Query deserves freshness
There was an seomoz article - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/does-query-deserves-diversity-algorithm-exist-at-google . I would like to point out the specific part of it - "So - because a lot of searchers express a preference for more diverse results than just those pages that ordinarily would "make the cut," Google provides an extra helping hand to pages they feel help to satisfy those searchers. This data could be gleaned from lower CTRs in the SERPs, greater numbers of query refinements, and even a high percentage of related searches performed subsequently" I don;t understand how data could be gleaned from lower CTRs, don't you think it should have been Higher CTRs ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050