Search Intent
SEOSearch intent is what someone is actually trying to accomplish when they type a query — and matching it matters more than matching the words.
Two people can search the same phrase and want opposite things. “Running shoes” might mean tell me how to choose a pair or sell me a pair now. A page that answers one will not satisfy the other, however many times it repeats the phrase.
Search engines resolve this by watching behaviour at scale. If most people who search a term click results of one kind and stay there, that kind of result is what the query means. Intent is therefore not something you decide about your page — it is something already decided by everyone who searched before you.
The four categories, and the one that matters
The usual split is informational (learn something), navigational (reach a specific site), commercial (compare before buying) and transactional (buy now).
The categories are less useful than the method. Search the term and look at what already ranks. If the first page is all comparison articles, the engine has concluded the query is commercial, and a product page will not rank there no matter how well optimised. If it is all tutorials, a sales page is competing in the wrong category entirely.
That check takes a minute and prevents the most common wasted effort in SEO: writing an excellent page of the wrong type.
Why it decides more than keywords
Ranking systems now match meaning rather than strings. A page can rank for phrasings it never contains, and fail to rank for the exact phrase it repeats, because relevance is judged by whether the page answers the underlying question.
The practical rule follows: write for the question, not the phrase. Then check that the answer arrives near the top. Intent includes expectations about depth and speed — someone searching a definition wants it in the first sentence, and a page that makes them scroll past an introduction has failed to match the intent even though the content is right.