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Intent, hidden within a search click, lies at the intersection of Search and Business, as in "let's do some business". That search click has extra-ordinary value because of the intent to buy -- that's why we're searching, right?

Perhaps, or maybe we're just browsing, or surfing, and we're not in the mood for advertisements. It could be more militant than that; perhaps we're still trying to research our choices and would see a sales pitch as tainting the honesty of the information. At least that's what the founders of Google originally believed.

Although the model of the web was a set of stateless pages, and a Google search box certainly fits that appearance, people's intent is not stateless. It ebbs and flows, from entertaining looking around, to researching choices and comparing possibilities, through sourcing a chosen product (now we're talking about a qualified buyer), to selecting fulfillment options, and possibly all the way to figuring out how to return a product that we're dissatisfied with. That last one is probably not the best time to present an ad claiming how wonderful that product is.

This is a "long running transaction," a series of steps that fit together and flow towards (and past) a purchasing decision, but with back-currents and eddies. And it really is a transaction in the database sense where a failure during one step can cause the entire sequence to be discarded as if it never happened. Though if you believe Sergey and Larry, it will be worse than never happening, you may lose trust in your guide through that transaction.

Has the intent changed? Depends on what that means. On one hand, what has changed across those steps is the mode of the intent. If the intent was to purchase a product, then the research, comparison, purchase, and fulfillment were clearly pieces of that intent, though they call for different approaches: organic search for the research, product focused responses for the purchase, perhaps service-oriented for the fulfillment, and some combination for the comparison.

But what about that "I need to return this product because I hate it" step? The intent has clearly changed, but it is more necessary than ever to connect this new intent to the previous steps. If not, perhaps the search engine will continue to suggest that product to a disgruntled customer with very counter-productive results.

So, what is the unifying concept? Is it intent, organized by modes? Not if what is being unified is a complete user's story about their purchasing experience.

As we have written about in the past, the industrial sector of the economy is heavily dependent on the Internet. According to 2001 data from the U.S. Department of Commerce (the latest date complete figures are available), 18% of manufacturing shipments were e-business transactions, compared to 1% of retail sales, 2% of service sales, and approximately 10% of wholesale commerce. More startling is the volume of manufacturing shipments through eCommerce, which totaled $725 billion and accounted for 68% of all e-business. These numbers dwarf retail eCommerce for the same period, which were $34 billion and less than 3% of all e-business.

And just as major retail sites like Amazon and Ebay depend heavily on their catalog content--and thus their content management capabilities--industrial sites are also heavily dependent on content and content management. Simply put, industrial buyers go to the Web seeking specific, actionable information about the products, materials, and components they need to buy. If they don't find that content on a given supplier's Web site, they move on. And they move on quickly. Within seconds, they have made a decision about whether the Web site has the information they need, in a form they need it in, and accessible in a way that is easy, fast, transparent--and anonymous.

I am attending a seminar today on industrial buyers and how they use the Internet. The event is sponsored by the North-Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce and ThomasNet.com. I will be live blogging during the morning as the speakers walk through some background and case studies tailored to manufacturers and industrial suppliers.

John Yunker is speaking on globalization, as part of the session, Content Management Globalization. John's a great speaker, and has a very useful blog, Web Globalization News.

Eric Silberstein is the founder of Idiom and an expert on DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Eric and I have done a couple of webinars recently on DITA and globalization, and his presentation today is a more comprehensive version of the one he has given in the Webinars. Eric is also an excellent speaker, and has a lot of credibility on this topic. Click here for the Idiom-sponsored white paper on DITA, and click here for Robin Cover's resource page on DITA.

For those of you tracking the evolution of Microsofts's Commerce Server, Content Management Server and Sharepoint, there is a tantalizing statement on Ryan Donovan's Commerce Server blog.

There is also a good 2-part article on MS Content Management Server, SharePoint, and MS Commerce Server integration at CMSWatch.