How to Find the True number of competing sites for a given keyword or Niche

One of the most difficult task for most newcomers to web marketing, is trying to determine how much competition there exist for your chosen topic.

Lets say you want to find out how much competition your niche of *stock market education* really has!

The first step, is to go to google.com and simply type in
stock market education
and press the search button.

Look at the line that reads something like :
Results 1 – 10 of about 122,000,000 for stock market education.

Mmmm.. that seems like a lot, but are there that many sites out there all about STOCK MARKET EDUCATION ??

The answer is a resounding NO !!!!!

It simply means that there 122 million pages (note Pages.. NOT Sites) with the words
stock, market and education somewhere on those pages ..

So it could pick up a page that has the following sentence on it..

“I went to the market today to get some stock for our shop, but the exhorbant prices they where charging was an education in itself.”

Its nothing about *stock market education*, but google would see it as being the same..

So to narrow down the list and find only those *pages* with the exact phrase “stock market education”, wrap the search phrase in double quotes (”) like I did in the line above.

Now tries this in Google..

Google now reports:
Personalized Results 1 – 10 of about 36,900 for “stock market education”.

Wow!! The number of competing pages suddenly fell from 122million pages to 36,900 pages !!

You see we did a much more focused search in Google by wrapping the phrase in double quote (”) symbols ..
A tip worth remembering.

Now to really find the number of competing pages, simply click on the “Advanced Search” link next to the google search button and from the option box that apprears, simply change the “Occurrences” option from “Any where in the page” to “In the title”

Then press the search button again.

Now Google reports:
Results 1 – 10 of about 956 for allintitle: “stock market education”.

So of all those 122million sites we initially found with our target words on them, really only 956 are potential competing pages.

Almost makes you think its worth entering into this niche doesn’t it..

Article from Website secrets 101 (website secrets)