Every keyword in SearchBlueprint carries two judgement aids, so you can weigh a list without researching each term by hand:
- Intent — a single letter for what the searcher is trying to do: I informational (learn something), C commercial (compare before buying), T transactional (ready to buy or book), N navigational (find a specific site). The letters come from live search-intent data, and keyword chips are colored by them so a list scans at a glance.
- Difficulty — a 0-100 estimate of how hard the keyword is to rank for, derived from the strength of what currently ranks.
There's nothing to run — intent and difficulty arrive with every keyword in research, the keyword map, and the planner's keyword chips. Hover, or read the columns where the table shows them.
Use them together
Read both at the pick-keywords step:
| You want | Look for |
|---|---|
| Buyers now | T and C keywords your site can plausibly win |
| Content topics | I keywords with volume, for the blog and calendar |
| Quick wins | Lower difficulty with decent volume, any intent |
| To defend the brand | N keywords containing your name |
A strategy of only high-volume I keywords produces traffic that reads and leaves; only high-difficulty T keywords produces a long wait. Mix your confirmed set deliberately.
What the letter and the number describe
Intent describes the searcher, not your page. "Wedding gown rental" is transactional even if your only page for it is a blog post — which tells you what kind of page to build.
Difficulty is comparative, not absolute. 40 in a local market is a different fight from 40 globally, so compare difficulty between your own candidate keywords rather than against folklore thresholds.
Limits and usage
- Intent classification is per keyword, from the search data provider. Some keywords legitimately have mixed intent — the letter is the dominant one.
- Difficulty summarizes the current top results. A shift in what ranks moves the number — it's a reading, not a constant.
- Keywords without enough data default to commercial rather than showing a blank, so treat single-letter certainty on very low-volume terms lightly.
If something isn't working
A keyword's intent looks wrong. Search it yourself and look at what ranks — the classifier follows the results page. When the results genuinely disagree with the letter, trust the results.
Chips show no color on a shared board. Shared boards render the plain chip style by design — the colors are an editor-view aid.