The underlying goal behind a query or prompt (informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial), which a system optimises to satisfy rather than the exact words used.
Search Intent is the underlying goal behind a query or prompt: what the person actually wants, as opposed to the exact words they used. The long-standing taxonomy sorts it into informational (learn something), navigational (reach a specific site), transactional (do or buy something), and commercial-investigation (compare before buying).
A system optimises to satisfy the intent rather than the exact wording. A search engine classifies it to decide which results fit; an AI system infers it to decide how to answer, whether the query deserves a live search, and which sources to retrieve. The same intent surfaces through countless phrasings, which is why we anchor to an entity and map the query fan-out of prompts around it rather than optimise phrase by phrase.
Reading intent correctly is a prerequisite for AI visibility: content wins a place in an answer when it matches the goal behind the prompt, not merely the keywords in it. Where a search engine classifies intent into buckets, an AI system can respond to finer, blended intents in a single conversational turn.
