Laser‐excited, time‐resolved spectroscopy techniques were used to investigate the characteristics of energy transfer in YVO4:Nd3+crystals. The temperatuare and time dependencies of the energy transfer rates were determined for both host‐sensitized and impurity ion interaction processes. The former process is found to have characteristics consistent with the migration and trapping of localized host excitons whereas the latter process is consistent with multistep energy migration via a two‐phonon‐assisted electric dipole‐dipole interaction mechanism.