Noobish question about Keyword Research:

Just wondering...

When I check my keyword's results. It says page x out of 68,000,000 results.

Ok, now when I get to page 43 which is the last page it says, page 43 out of 426 results.

The question is... how did it jump from 68 million results to only 426. Is 426 the REAL competition?

Thanks BHW.

google gets's it wrong sometimes and all of those millions of results are just an estimate

I see. So the real competition is a estimation of 68,000,000 or is the LAST page's results the actual competition, which is 426?

thizzladen said:

I see. So the real competition is a estimation of 68,000,000 or is the LAST page's results the actual competition, which is 426?

Click to expand...

Yes, you can say that because G0ogle just ignored rest of the pages since they are just duplicate or irrelevant results, not what "you are looking for"

Actually number of competition pages is just one of the factors to analyze keyword competition. What really matters is analyzing the on-site/off-site SEO factors of the first page top 10 sites as they are you REAL competitors!

cyberzilla said:

Yes, you can say that because G0ogle just ignored rest of the pages since they are just duplicate or irrelevant results, not what "you are looking for"

Actually number of competition pages is just one of the factors to analyze keyword competition. What really matters is analyzing the on-site/off-site SEO factors of the first page top 10 sites as they are you REAL competitors!

Click to expand...

what cyberzilla said, make sure YOU analyze the top 10 competitors

Keyword research is an interesting topic because there are so many methods people use to determine the competitiveness of a keyword. Sadly the majority of these methods are worthless and are a waste of time. The bottom line is that if you are not on the first page you are missing out on 95%+ of the clicks. That said the only effective way to figure out how competitiveness of a keyword is by see how competitive the first page is (get the SEOmoz tool bar and use the SERP overlay feature). Look at how many links they have and how as well as the # of linking domains (very accurate metric for gauging competition). The best tool is SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty tool which pretty much does all this for you. But it requires a pro subscription at $99/mo. That said they do offer a 30 day free trial.