What Is a Search Query in SEO? Types and Examples

Last updated: November 2026.

A search query is the exact word or phrase a person types or speaks into a search engine to find something. It is the searcher’s wording, not yours. DigiFix treats search queries as the demand signal behind every page, then checks which of them a site can actually rank for.

How is a search query different from a keyword?

A query is demand. A keyword is your response to it. The person searching never sees your keyword list, and you never control their wording, which is why the same need arrives as “plumber clayton”, “emergency plumber near me” and “who fixes burst pipes on a Sunday”.

Google’s advertising documentation puts it plainly: a search term is a word or set of words a person enters when searching, while a keyword is a word or set that an advertiser adds to an ad group so the ads target the right audience (Google Ads Help, About the search terms report). The same distinction holds on the organic side, where a keyword is the phrase you decide to answer and the query is whatever the searcher actually typed.

Search query, keyword and search term compared. Only the query belongs to the searcher.

Practical consequence: you do not “target a query”. You write a page that answers a cluster of them, then use the query data to find the phrasings you missed. Our guide to finding the best keywords covers how to pick the cluster, and the search intent optimisation process covers how to match each one to a page.

What are the four main types of search queries?

Almost every query falls into one of four intent buckets. The bucket decides the page: an informational query wants an answer, a transactional query wants a booking form. Serving the wrong one is the most common reason a page ranks and still does not convert.

The four query types, with Australian examples. The page type column is the part most sites get wrong.

Informational queries

The searcher wants to understand something: “how much does a plumber cost in Melbourne”, “why is my hot water cloudy”, “what is a search query”. They are not ready to buy, and a hard sell here reads as noise. Answer the question in the first two sentences, then offer the next step.

This is the bucket where AI Overviews appear most often, so the page competes with a summary rather than with ten blue links. Clear, self-contained answers in plain text are what get quoted. Our answer engine optimisation guide covers that format in detail.

Navigational queries

The person already knows where they want to go and is using the search box as a shortcut: “DigiFix Melbourne”, “myob login”, “Australia Post tracking”. You cannot win someone else’s navigational query, and trying looks like brand bidding.

What you can do is make sure your own branded queries land on the right page, with a title and description that confirm the searcher arrived in the right place. A branded search that lands on a thin category page is a lost enquiry.

Commercial investigation queries

“Best SEO agency Melbourne”, “DigiFix vs [competitor]”, “is SEO worth it for a small business”. The searcher is close to a decision and comparing options. This is the highest value bucket for most Australian service businesses and the one most often left to directories.

Answer it with proof rather than adjectives: named clients, dated results, pricing signals, and a clear statement of who you are not right for. A comparison table beats a paragraph of self-praise every time. The theory behind this sits in our guide to search intent.

Transactional queries

“Book a plumber in Clayton Saturday”, “buy standing desk Melbourne”, “SEO audit quote”. The intent is to act now. Every extra step between the landing page and the booking is a lost job, so the page needs a visible call to action, opening hours and a phone number that works on a mobile.

Transactional queries also carry the most local variation. Someone searching at 7pm on a Friday is not the same customer as someone searching on a Tuesday morning, which is why the booking path has to survive out of hours.

What are near me queries?

“Near me” queries carry an implied location the searcher never types, because the device supplies it. “Plumber near me” from Clayton is a different query to the same words typed in Ballarat, and the results reflect that. Google resolves the location from the device, the search history and the wording of the query.

Two things decide whether you appear. Your Google Business Profile, which supplies the map result, and a page that names the suburbs you actually serve in text rather than in an image. A service page listing Clayton, Mulgrave, Springvale and Oakleigh in the body copy is doing work that a graphic of the same list is not.

If local is a real revenue channel for you, the local SEO guide covers the profile, citations and review signals in order of impact. The keyword research for content post covers how to find the suburb level phrasing to pair with each page.

How do conversational queries work in AI Overviews?

People type and speak longer questions than they used to, and AI surfaces answer them directly. Google’s own documentation describes AI Overviews and AI Mode issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to build a response, a technique it calls query fan-out (Google Search Central, AI features and your website).

That matters for one practical reason: a single long question now fans out into several sub queries, so a page that answers only the headline question may not be selected for any of them. Pages that answer the follow-ups in the same place do better. This is the logic behind our AEO approach.

Google is explicit that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, and that the normal SEO fundamentals still apply, including having important content available in textual form (Google Search Central, AI features and your website). You do not need a separate AI strategy. You need the answer in text, in the page, with the question as a heading.

One caution on numbers. Voice and conversational search get quoted constantly with figures that cannot be traced to a primary source, usually a vendor page citing another vendor page. If a stat does not name its research and date, leave it out of your business case.

How do you find the queries reaching your site?

Search Console already holds the answer, for free. It reports the queries that produced impressions and clicks for your site over the selected period, which is far more useful than guessing at volume in a keyword tool.

1. Open Search Console, then Performance and Search results (Google Search Console Help, Performance report).
2. Set the date range to the last three months, or use Compare to put this quarter next to the same quarter last year.
3. Stay on the Queries tab. This groups your data by the search query the person used.
4. Sort by impressions rather than clicks. High impressions with a poor click through rate is a title and description problem, not a ranking problem.
5. Filter by page to see which queries one URL is collecting. Pages ranking for queries they were never written for are the easiest wins on the site.
6. Look for queries sitting at position 5 to 20. They are close enough that on-page work moves them, unlike a page at position 60.

Read the list with one caveat in mind. Google warns that even when a query appears in your list you may not see your site for it if you run the search yourself, because results depend on the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching (Google Search Console Help, Performance report). Use the report as evidence of demand, not as a screenshot of a ranking.

If you also run paid search, the Google Ads search terms report shows the real queries that triggered your ads, with the conversions attached. Google notes that low volume terms are omitted to protect privacy, so the two reports never match exactly (Google Ads Help, About the search terms report). Between them you get the paid demand and the organic demand, and the overlap is usually where the money is. Our Search Console walkthrough covers the other reports worth checking monthly.

How do you match content to each query type?

One page per intent, not one page for everything. A service page that also tries to be a cost guide and a comparison table ends up serving none of them well, and Google has to guess which it is.

Here is how that plays out on a real shape of job, a plumbing business in Melbourne’s south east with six pages and a Google Business Profile.

The situation. The site ranks reasonably for “plumber clayton” but the blog post about hot water systems collects traffic that never enquires, and the owner cannot tell whether the blog is helping or just filling the analytics.

1. Week 1. Pull the query report for the last 90 days and sort every query into the four types. Most owners find the blog is collecting informational queries while the service page is missing the commercial ones entirely.
2. Week 2. Rewrite the service page for the transactional and commercial queries it already nearly ranks for: the suburb name in the H1, the booking form above the fold, opening hours and a price signal.
3. Weeks 3 and 4. Add an FAQ block to the blog post answering the cost and “which system” questions, with each question as an H3, so it can be quoted in an AI answer. Link it to the service page with a clear anchor.
4. Month 2. Build one comparison page for the commercial investigation queries. This is the page that wins “best plumber [suburb]” style searches, and it needs proof, not adjectives.
5. Month 3. Re-check the query report. The measure of success is commercial queries climbing into the top ten, not raw traffic rising.

What waiting costs. The competitor ranking for the commercial queries keeps taking the enquiries that the blog traffic was supposed to feed. Informational traffic without a path to a commercial page is a cost, not an asset, and it compounds every month the service page stays thin.

This is the same mapping work we do inside our SEO services, and you can see the outcomes on the DigiFix portfolio page. If you want the background on how the agency works, the about DigiFix page covers the team and the process, and the DigiFix blog has the rest of the SEO basics series.

What do people ask about search queries?

Is a search query the same as a keyword?

No. A search query is the exact wording a person types or speaks into a search engine, and a keyword is the phrase you choose to target on a page or in an ad. Google makes the same distinction in its advertising documentation, where a search term is what the person enters and a keyword is what the advertiser adds to an ad group. The query is demand, and the keyword is your answer to it.

How many types of search queries are there?

Four intent types cover almost everything: informational, navigational, commercial investigation and transactional. Some practitioners split informational into “know” and “know simple”, which is useful for deciding how long an answer should be, but the four way split is enough to plan a site. The test is what the searcher wants next, not how the query is worded.

What is an example of a navigational query?

Typing “DigiFix Melbourne” instead of the domain, or “Australia Post tracking” instead of opening the app. The person already knows the destination and is using search as a shortcut. You cannot win a navigational query aimed at another brand. What you can do is make sure your own branded queries land on the page the searcher expected, with a title that confirms it.

Do I need to optimise for near me queries separately?

Not separately, but deliberately. Near me queries rely on a location the device supplies, so the results change with where the person is standing. That makes your Google Business Profile and your suburb level page copy the two things that decide whether you appear. A page that names the suburbs it serves in text does more for this than the same list in a graphic.

Can I see the exact queries people used to find my site?

Yes, in Search Console under Performance and then Search results, on the Queries tab. It shows the queries that produced impressions and clicks over your selected period. It is not exhaustive, low volume queries are often grouped or withheld, and Google warns you may not see your own site if you run the same search yourself. Treat it as evidence of demand rather than a ranking screenshot.

How do search queries affect AI Overviews?

Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may issue several related searches per question, which it calls query fan-out. One long question can therefore depend on several sub queries being answered. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, so the practical work is answering the follow up questions in plain text on the same page.