A search on Google with "allintitle:keyword" and checking the number of results is something used by some marketers to determine whether that is a hard to rank for keyword or not. If that number is high, then it has a lot of competition (even though you won't know how good or bad it is), if low, then it would have low competition (again, not a good indicator because those could be very hard to outrank).

I'd say the best option is to use it as an indicator and then start looking for the top 10 websites for that keyword and decide whether you think you can outrank them or not.

Its meaningless. Don't use title competition in your analysis. The primary focus of your competition analysis should be the sites on the first page. If you can't beat the top 5, then it won't matter how many websites have the keyword in the title.

The intitle: search is very useful when researching competition, the problem is most people do it wrong IMO.

When researching a keyword, search the keyword with a normal keyword search.

The site that is first in Google SERPs is your competition, use the intitle: search on only that domain.

Example, say my keyword is adsense site & I search Google for that keyword phrase, lets say Warrior Forum ranked #1 in Google SERPs, do an intitle: search for Warrior Forums URL.

intitle:"adsense site" site:www.warriorforum.com

Now check the internal/external links for those pages.

You can also search for each individual keyword from the original keyword phrase to get an idea how serious the competition is about the subject (the big picture):

intitle:"adsense" site:www.warriorforum.com


intitle:"site" site:www.warriorforum.com

I agree, intitle is a very useful method of examining the competition. The title tag is still one of the most powerful on-page SEO methods available - because a title is a limited resource.

When you do an intitle search, you can see all the people who have decided that keyword is important enough to put it into their title tag. From that top group, you can manually examine the top contenders and get a sense of how serious they are about SEO.

Fortunately, this latest round of Google updates has thrown the entire listing upside down. If you're serious, you'll be able to watch the competent SEOs make changes to their sites - that'll tell you whose a real threat.

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