A query has informational intent when the searcher wants to learn something or get an answer, not buy anything or navigate to a specific site. "How to cook rice" and "what causes a 502 error" are typical examples: the searcher wants an answer, full stop, with no purchase decision anywhere in the picture.
Informational queries make up the largest share of all searches by volume, which is why so much content marketing is built around answering them; they're where most of a site's potential audience actually starts. The tradeoff is monetization: a searcher looking up "how to cook rice" isn't shopping, so informational content mostly earns its keep indirectly, building trust and traffic that pays off later, rather than converting directly the way a transactional or commercial-intent page might. Content built for informational intent works best when it actually answers the question completely and directly, since a page that makes the reader dig for the answer or pushes a sales pitch too early tends to lose them to a competitor's page that just answers the question.
