The Google Search Guide: Determining Intent (Part 1)

Course Introduction:

As a current contractor for Leapforce, I do my fair share of Search Engine Evaluation. My job is to take a user query (that's what you search in a search engine) and determine the utility of the page the user landed on based on the user's intent. I spend my fair share of time searching through Google, and have lots of experience finding exactly what I'm looking for by knowing a few good search tips. Whether it be for research, or just for fun, these guides will help you do the same and set you up for whatever you need to find!



Determining Intent - Part 1:

User Intent is what you, the user, intend to do while searching. As a Search Engine Evaluator, we are taught that User Intent is split up into 3 seperate groups; do, know, and go. Whenever we start evaluating a query, we must first determine User Intent. The same goes for searching, before you search, determine what your intent really is. This will make your searching that much easier. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I want to do something?
• Do I want to know something?
• Do I want to go to a particular website?

Those 3 questions will quickly help set you up for your search type. Determining exactly what your intention is, is very important because if you're unsure what you wish to do you will not find anything that you are looking for and you may be missing out on some helpful tools which could get you to your end result faster. However, if you are prepared, you can narrow down your list of results to hopefully a few Vital, Useful, or at least Relevant pages. Once you have done this, you are ready to move on.


Determining Intent - Part 2:

The next step in our evaluation process, at least when it comes to determining intent, is figuring out what the page should be all about in relation to the query. For instance, say a user searches "life help". First we would see this as a do/know query because there is no website mentioned, and secondly we would be looking for information or assistance in personal matters, however we would not know exactly what kind of help the user needed.

If you think about this as a user, you will realize that your searches can be narrowed much further, and you'll find exactly what you're looking for. So the user looking for "life help" could narrow their search to be something like: "information on how to make your girlfriend hate you less for cheating". The query is extended, yes, but as an Evaluator, I can easily determine a pages utility to the end user, and your searches will return more useful results.


Determining Intent - Conclusion:

Determining your intent when searching is a very important thing to do. Before you search, try narrowing down exactly what you want, that way your search is less broad and can be focused on results that will yield a higher utility. This alone could very well get you what you need, but you may have to use a few tools at your disposal. The next section will focus on search modifiers that will greatly improve your search results.

READ PART 2​

 

Why did you make it in 3 parts instead of just one? I don't know if that counts for 3 separate guides..

 

I'm not going for UE, I made them separate because I felt that people may not want to read them all at once, and I figured 3 parts would allow for easier fixing and such.

Plus, there's no pictures, so it's a bit tl;dr .