Buyer intent keywords: the 4 types and how to spot them

'Coffee machine' gets a hundred times the searches of 'jura e8 vs delonghi dinamica plus'. The second query is worth more to a seller of coffee machines. Behind the first is anyone — a student writing a paper, someone browsing pictures. Behind the second is a person with a shortlist of two and a credit card warming up. That difference — intent — is legible in the words themselves, and learning to read it changes which posts you write and which ones eventually pay rent.

The four types, in order of distance from money

• Informational — learning, no purchase in sight: 'why is my water heater making noise', 'what is escrow'. The biggest volumes, the furthest from a sale. Valuable for becoming known, terrible as a portfolio's only holding.
• Commercial investigation — a purchase decision in progress: 'best', 'vs', 'review', 'alternatives', 'is X worth it', 'cost of'. The searcher is comparing options, and content that genuinely helps them compare gets a seat at the decision.
• Transactional — ready to act: 'buy', 'hire', 'quote', 'pricing', 'near me', 'book'. Smallest volumes, highest value per visitor; usually best served by a service or product page, not a blog post.
• Navigational — looking for a specific known thing: brand names, 'yourcompany login'. You either own the brand or you don't; little strategy lives here beyond ranking for your own name.

Reading intent from the words

The modifiers do most of the work. Question words — how, why, what — signal informational. Comparison words — best, vs, top, review, alternative — signal commercial investigation. Action and urgency words — buy, hire, cost, quote, near me, emergency — signal transactional. And specificity itself is an intent signal: each detail a searcher adds ('water heater' → 'tankless water heater installation cost 50 gallon replacement') is effort, and searchers spend effort in proportion to how real their problem is. Long, specific, awkward-sounding queries are where small sites win — partly because they're less contested, mostly because the people typing them mean it.

When unsure, let Google tell you

Google has spent two decades learning what each query 'means' — and it shows you its conclusion, free, in the results themselves. Search the keyword and read the page: dominated by how-to guides and explainers, Google decided it's informational; comparison articles and review roundups, commercial; product pages, ads, and a map pack, transactional. This matters beyond curiosity — a page fighting the intent Google settled on rarely ranks regardless of quality. If page one for your target is all listicles, a service page won't crack it, and vice versa. Match the shape of what's ranking, or pick a different query.

The results page is Google's public verdict on what a query means. Read the verdict before you write the appeal.

The portfolio: what your content mix should look like

The classic small-business mistake is a blog that's 95% informational — big volumes felt like the obvious targets, and the traffic arrived without customers attached. The reverse failure exists too: all bottom-funnel pages and nothing that makes anyone aware you exist. The working shape for a small site starting out is roughly half commercial-investigation content — every 'best X for Y', 'X vs Y', 'X cost', and 'is X worth it' your niche supports — anchored by your transactional pages, topped up with the informational questions your actual buyers ask on the way to buying. Commercial-investigation queries are the sweet spot: enough volume to matter, close enough to money to convert, and specific enough that the biggest sites often haven't bothered.

One more push toward that mix: as AI answers absorb more informational clicks, the queries that still reliably send visitors skew commercial and transactional — people comparing and buying still click through. The intent ladder isn't just where the money is; it's increasingly where the clicks are.

Make it operational

Take your current keyword list and add an intent column: label each keyword informational, commercial, transactional, or navigational, judged by the modifier words and a spot-check of the results page. Count the labels. Most lists come back overwhelmingly informational, which instantly explains a lot of traffic-without-customers histories. Then write the missing C queries into your calendar first: for a typical service business that's 'cost of X', 'X vs Y', 'best X for [situation]', 'questions to ask before hiring X' — a season's worth of posts, each one aimed at someone mid-decision. Volume will look unimpressive. Watch what converts instead; intent beats volume everywhere it counts.