Pillar

Intent

How well a source satisfies the real job behind the query or conversation.

Intent is what the user actually wants after the query — the decision, the comparison, the plan.

Intent is a decision, not a topic

Every query has a topic. Only some queries have an explicit decision. Answer engines are increasingly good at inferring the decision from the topic and the conversation around it.

The pages that get cited resolve the decision. Pages that only cover the topic get paraphrased into the answer without attribution.