Search used to be about matching keywords. Today, AI-powered search engines promise to “understand what users mean.” In practice, they struggle with something far more basic: intent.
Intent is the goal behind a search query—the job the user is trying to get done at that moment. Are they trying to learn, do, fix, compare, or verify? Intent answers why the question was asked, not just what words were typed.
For technical content, intent matters more than phrasing. A query like “configure OAuth token refresh” can signal at least four different needs:
a conceptual explanation,
a step-by-step task,
a troubleshooting scenario,
or a confirmation that a system even supports the feature.
The words don’t change. The intent does.
AI search systems are trained on language patterns, not user goals. That creates several hard problems:...
