Narrowing Down User Intent is Key to Search (and Marketing)
How Searcher Behaviour, Intentions, and Expectations Work in Google’s World with David Amerland 11 January 2022 at 17 H CEST (Paris)
In this clip, David Amerland explains that intent is easier to understand when there are strict boundaries. He uses Google Maps as an example of a context where the boundaries are well defined and narrow and therefore intent is relatively simple for Google to understand. He goes on to point out that a good marketing funnel creates well-defined boundaries that help people in that funnel make decision as they move downwards.
00:00 The importance of boundaries
00:35 Boundaries narrow down context
00:55 Intent is clearer with specific silos or websites
01:26 Creating a marketing funnel
Transcript from: Narrowing Down User Intent is Key to Search (and Marketing)
You made a very interesting point, which I need to refine now. You’re talking about Google Maps. And what we have there, we have strictly bounded context. So, you don’t have an infinite number of roads that will get you from A to B. You have a source point and a destination, and you have, perhaps, time, which you need to get there quickly or avoid certain things, or you get there in a specific way so you can stop somewhere else. This kind of setup where we create boundaries, which narrow down the context allows us to then control within the soft sense of the word human behavior and better understand intent. So in that regard, if we can create specific silos or websites or situations where things narrow down, intent becomes a lot clearer to understand, or at least guess…
Where this doesn’t exist – if we’re looking at the map of the world for example, and we’re trying to define something on it – then any place is possible, and our intent becomes very rarefied, very difficult to actually understand. So when we come to understanding what should we do in order to create better content? Well, here’s the first thing. This is the case where everything old is new again or everything new is old again kind of thing.
So we’re talking about creating a marketing funnel, which creates boundaries, which allows the person who is looking at that, to narrow down their choices in a way that clarifies what they have to do.
