Um, no.

Your search engine competition is ONLY the ten sites on page ONE for any given keyword.

That's it. TEN sites. That is your competition.

Also, when I determine my top ten competition, I want to see the sites that my potential site visitor will also see... thus you will almost always need to search for your keyword without using quotes.

Using quotes just show's you exactly how many pages that are indexed have the phrase in the title or on the page. What value does that have? Absolutely none. Why? Because my potential site visitor is most likely not going to find my site by searching with quotes.

For those seeking true competition values you need to look at the top ten results and then start looking at keyword optimization, site age, site PR, site backlinks, page backlinks, and link sources.

That is how you correctly determine keyword competition, and thankfully there are a slew of tools that can compile all of that information for you quickly and easily.

BP

Thanks for that explanation. It will probably help clarify the issue for anybody that is new.

I wanted to add a caveat though that just because the keyword in quotes seems to only have 1000 (as an example) competiting sites, still doesn't mean it is going to be easy to rank for.

You still need to take time to look at the actual competition on the first page to see if you can bit them. a keyword like "how to get rid of back pain" might only have 500 competiting sites in quotes but if 50 of those are authority sites in the niche with high page rank and a high number of inks and that are all targeting those specific words, then if you are starting a new site you might want to forget targeting those words.

However, if in another example the same keywords had 6000 competiting pages but they where all article on article directories or web 2.0 sites or non authority sites with hardly any links, then it might be primed to go after.

Basically what I am saying is that there is a bit more to it. The danger with just looking at the keyword in quotes is that you are looking at not fully verified data and a newbie might think he has found himself/herself and excellent keyword when in fact it is to difficult to rank for and they are going to be wasting their time and effort.

Just thought it was important to add that.