Buyer Intent Keywords: 200+ B2B Keywords by Category

The short version

Buyer intent keywords are the search terms, page titles and topic phrases that a company uses when it has moved from learning about a problem to actively choosing a vendor. This page lists 200 of them, organized into six categories (software evaluation, pricing, comparison, migration, integration, compliance), with a funnel-stage and signal-strength rating for each. Most are templated with [vendor] or [category] so you can expand them for your own market; several are real, high-volume examples from the intent data and ABM space so you can see what the pattern looks like filled in.

After the tables we explain how to turn these keywords into topics in Bombora, into competitor and category tracking in G2 Buyer Intent, and into search campaigns and negative lists in Google Ads. If you are still choosing a provider, read best intent data provider for in-market buyers first; if the vocabulary is unfamiliar, the intent data glossary defines every term used here.

How to read the tables

Funnel stage is where in the buying process the phrase usually appears. "Mid" means the buyer knows the category and is building a list. "Late" means they are narrowing to one or two vendors, negotiating, or preparing to switch. Signal strength is our editorial judgment of how strongly a single occurrence predicts an active purchase, from Low to Very high. A search for "[category] market leaders" could be an analyst, a student or a job seeker; a search for "[vendor] SOC 2 Type II report" is almost always a security reviewer with a deal in flight. Where it shows up tells you which data source can actually observe the phrase, which matters because Bombora sees publisher content, G2 sees review-site behavior, and Google Ads sees search queries. No single provider sees all three; see first-party vs third-party intent data for why.

Replace [vendor] with your own product name and each named competitor, and [category] with the G2 category you compete in. A 10-competitor market expands the comparison table alone into more than 300 concrete phrases.

Software evaluation keywords (36)

Software evaluation keywords signal that a company has named the category and is building a shortlist. Review-site and analyst terms cluster here. "Demo", "free trial" and "RFP template" are the strongest signals in the set because they are things people only look for when they intend to run an evaluation.

Pricing keywords (32)

Pricing keywords are the single highest-intent category in B2B software search. Nobody researches a vendor's per-seat cost or renewal terms for fun. The negotiation and Vendr terms indicate a deal in procurement; the "cancel contract" and "hidden fees" terms indicate a current customer at risk, which is useful for churn defense and for competitors' conquest campaigns.

Comparison and alternatives keywords (32)

Comparison keywords are what G2 Buyer Intent is built to catch, since G2 hosts the comparison and alternatives pages that most of these searches land on. The real examples at the bottom of the table are terms our network tracks directly; "6sense alternatives" and "ZoomInfo competitors" each have dedicated sister sites at 6sensealternatives.com and zoominfocompetitors.com.

Migration and switching keywords (31)

Migration keywords identify accounts that are unhappy with an incumbent and looking for the exit. These are the most valuable conquest signals in the list. A company searching "[competitor] export data" or "[competitor] contract buyout" is not evaluating; it has decided to leave and is working out the logistics. Some vendors run buyout programs specifically against this intent.

Integration keywords (34)

Integration keywords appear late in evaluation, when a technical evaluator is checking whether the tool fits the existing stack. They are especially predictive when the search pairs your product with a specific tool the buyer already uses, such as "[vendor] Salesforce integration" or "[vendor] Snowflake integration". These phrases are also cheap in Google Ads because most vendors do not bid on them.

Compliance and security keywords (35)

Compliance keywords come from security and legal reviewers, which means a deal has advanced far enough for procurement to be involved. "SOC 2 Type II report", "DPA" and "subprocessors" are as close to a closing signal as public search behavior gets. For intent data specifically, "is intent data GDPR compliant" and "bidstream data legal" are real questions buyers ask before signing with a provider.

How to use these keywords in Bombora

Bombora does not track keywords; it tracks topics from a taxonomy of roughly 20,000 entries, and scores accounts on each topic weekly with its Company Surge score. So the job is to map the keyword patterns above to the nearest Bombora topics, then to request custom topics for anything the taxonomy lacks.

1. Search the taxonomy. Bombora's Topic Taxonomy page and the in-app topic picker let you search by keyword. "Account-based marketing", "intent data", "sales intelligence" and most vendor names exist as topics already; niche integrations usually do not.
2. Build three clusters, not one list. A category cluster (the software-evaluation terms), a competitor cluster (competitor names as topics), and a pain cluster (the problems your product solves). Bombora's own guidance is to keep clusters to 10–15 topics so surge scores stay meaningful.
3. Request custom topics for comparison and migration phrases. Bombora accepts custom topic requests through its support process; expect a lead time and a minimum volume threshold. "Switching from [competitor]" style phrases are worth the wait.
4. Set surge thresholds by cluster. A Surge score of 60+ on a competitor topic plus any surge on your category topic in the same week is a tighter trigger than either alone. Bombora exposes both the score and the week-over-week trend.
5. Push to activation. Bombora syncs to Salesforce, HubSpot, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, The Trade Desk and most ABM platforms. See how to activate intent data in ads for the channel-by-channel steps.

How to use these keywords in G2 Buyer Intent

G2 Buyer Intent is keyword-adjacent rather than keyword-driven: it reports which accounts visited your product profile, your category, your comparison pages, and your competitors' pages on G2.com. The comparison, pricing and alternatives keywords above map almost one-to-one onto G2 page types.

1. Claim and complete your G2 profile, including the pricing tab. Accounts that view your pricing tab are surfacing "[vendor] pricing" intent inside G2.
2. Track your top five competitors in the Buyer Intent settings so that "[competitor] alternatives" and "[you] vs [competitor]" page visits are flagged.
3. Segment by page type. G2 separates category-page visits (mid funnel) from comparison-page visits (late funnel). Route comparison-page accounts to sales and category-page accounts to ads.
4. Sync to your CRM and ad tools. G2 offers native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, LinkedIn Matched Audiences, Slack and most ABM platforms, per its integrations directory.
5. Add TrustRadius as a second source if you sell to enterprise IT; the same keyword patterns apply to its product, comparison and alternatives pages.

How to use these keywords in Google Ads

Google Search is the one place where you can observe buyer intent keywords literally, as typed queries, and pay to appear next to them. The catch is that Google does not tell you which account searched, so the keyword list does double duty: as targeting, and as a source of first-party intent once the click lands on your site.

1. Build separate campaigns per category. Pricing, comparison and migration keywords deserve their own campaigns with their own landing pages ("[you] vs [competitor]" pages convert far better than a generic homepage for comparison queries).
2. Bid on competitor names carefully. Google permits bidding on trademarked competitor names in most regions, but ad copy generally cannot use the trademark. Expect higher CPCs and lower Quality Scores; the migration and alternatives phrases are usually the best value.
3. Use phrase and exact match for late-funnel terms. Broad match on "[category] software" will pull in students and job seekers; exact match on "[vendor] pricing" will not.
4. Mine the Search Terms report weekly for new comparison and migration phrases you did not anticipate, and add them to both your Google campaigns and your Bombora custom-topic requests.
5. Build negatives from the low-signal rows. "jobs", "careers", "salary", "login", "tutorial" and "certification" appear alongside nearly every vendor name and rarely indicate a buyer.
6. Capture the click as first-party intent. Tag landing pages by keyword category so your web analytics, your ABM platform and any de-anonymization tool (RB2B, Warmly, 6sense's WebID) can attribute the visit to a keyword class and score the account accordingly.

For teams running this across LinkedIn, Meta and Google at once, paid-media platforms such as Metadata.io (our sponsor, disclosed) and the ad modules inside 6sense and Demandbase can take the intent-scored audience and run it across channels; we compare those options on the activation page.

Frequently asked questions