What is an informational query?
An informational query is a question. What is a creative agency, how long does a brand film take, why is my website slow, who directed a particular commercial. The searcher wants an answer or an understanding, not a product page or a login screen, and the search engine responds accordingly: with articles, explainers, videos, featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes and, increasingly, AI-generated overviews. It is one of the classic types of search intent, alongside navigational (reaching a known site), transactional (ready to act) and commercial (comparing first).
Most searches are informational. The majority of what people type into a search box is a question or a topic rather than a purchase, which is why so much of the web exists to answer them.
Why it matters
Why informational queries matter
Because they are where a relationship with a brand usually begins. Someone who asks what a sizzle reel is today may commission one next year, and the brand that answered the question clearly is the one they remember. Informational content is how a company demonstrates expertise, earns links and mentions from other sites, and builds the topical authority that helps its commercial pages rank too. It is the top of the funnel, and the funnel does not fill itself.
They matter to search engines in a particular way as well. Google's quality systems were largely built around informational pages, so the standards for accuracy, expertise and usefulness are highest here, and the rewards for meeting them are real.
In practice
How informational queries work in practice
- 01
The work starts with recognizing the intent. Look at the results page for a term: if it is articles and questions rather than products and brands, the query is informational, and the page that targets it must be an answer. Keyword research then finds the questions worth answering, grouped into topics, and each gets a page that answers it, in the first paragraph, with the depth beneath for anyone who wants more. Headings carry the questions people actually ask, because that is how sections get pulled into snippets.
- 02
Then the page is connected: linked to related answers, linked from the commercial pages it supports, and measured on whether it earned impressions, clicks and the next step. The next step is the point. An informational page that answers the question and quietly shows the reader what the brand does with that knowledge has done its job; one that answers and stops has done half of it.
At RIOT
Informational queries at RIOT
This glossary is our answer to informational queries about our own field. Every entry targets a question someone searches, answers it in the first lines, and links to the related terms and, where we have genuinely done the work, to the clients it was done for. It is top-of-funnel content in the plainest sense, and also how we make sure the words we use with clients mean the same thing on both sides of the table.
Watch out
What people get wrong about informational queries
Trying to sell on them. A page that meets a question with a pitch gets abandoned in seconds, and the engagement signals follow. The other mistake is the reverse: answering so neutrally that the page could belong to anyone, which earns a snippet and nothing after it. The third is writing for the keyword rather than the question, so a page with the right title takes four hundred words to say anything, which is exactly what snippets and AI overviews skip.
