User Intent
User intent is the underlying goal behind a search query, also called search intent. The four broad categories are informational, navigational, commercial and transactional. Aligning a page with its intent is the single highest-leverage change most underperforming pages can make.
Why it matters for your rankings
Intent alignment beats almost every other optimisation because it addresses whether the page should exist in that form at all, rather than how well it is tuned.
It also determines what success looks like. An informational page judged on conversion rate will always look like a failure, and a transactional page judged on time-on-page will look like one too. Assigning the wrong metric to a page is how good content gets cut and weak content survives. The other practical consequence is funnel design: informational pages should link deliberately to commercial pages, so the traffic they earn has somewhere useful to go.
How to check it on your site
Classify every important page
Label each as informational, navigational, commercial or transactional, and check the format matches.
Validate against the live SERP
The formats Google already ranks reveal the intent more reliably than any assumption.
Match the metric to the intent
Judge informational pages on engagement and assisted conversions, transactional pages on direct conversion.
Link across the funnel
Informational pages should route readers to the commercial pages that serve the next step.