Adding "vs" shifts intent commercial 71 percent of the time

Adding "vs" shifts intent commercial 71 percent of the time
Modifiers are reliable intent tells. We classified SERPs for 1,300 queries grouped by their modifier word.

— "vs": 71 percent commercial-comparison
— "how to": 88 percent informational ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇
— "buy": 64 percent transactional ▇▇▇▇▇▇
— "near me": 92 percent local

The modifier predicts page type more reliably than the topic does, so you can pre-sort thousands of keywords without opening a single SERP. So what: build an intent filter on modifier words first, then only manually check the ambiguous middle. It cuts SERP-checking time by more than half.

Benchmark of the week: "how to" signals informational intent 88 percent of the time.