Difference between Heuristic Search and Informed Search

Question

I am a bit confused between these two terms: Heuristic Search and Informed Search. I understand both require knowledge to have a better performance than blind searches, but is there any significant difference?

Answer 1

There is no difference.

In the field of Heuristic Search in Artificial Intelligence, a heuristic function is a function that uses knowledge about the problem to estimate "how far" a state is from the goal. Using this function, algorithms like A* can generally expand a smaller number of nodes than blind search algorithms like Dijkstra's algorithm. This is why Informed search is a synonym for Heuristic Search, which is a search with information of the problem.

Hope it helps.