What is a Search Query?

A search query is the keyword or keyword string/phrase used by a person navigating through search engines like Google, Bing or others. Simply stated, a search query is the user input placed into the search bar. A search query is matched to either identical keywords, keyword phrases, synonyms or based on latent semantic indexing. A Search Query is at times synonymous with a Keyword, however the defining difference on platforms such as Google Ads would be that a Search Query is the user defined search parameter.