I know I really should know this, but never was overly concerned about my competition until I just started doing a new project. When I type in a couple keywords in the Google text box (or Google bar) - when it returns a million results - I'm assuming you got some stiff competition, correct? I guess what I'm trying to get to is how many is considered stiff competition?
Well for myself I only enter competitive markets, if you enter make money online, you will get 181 million results. If you type in weight loss, you will get 96 million. Anything over 10 million is quite competitive, anything under 1 million or under is usually not too hard to deal with.
searching your keywords within quotations will give you a better idea of the competition... http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENXX257&q="make+money+online"&btnG=Search&meta= ...so 'make money online' has 14 million true competitors. The other 167 million just happened to have those 3 words within the same page. All I can say is the number of results doesn't necessarily speak for the toughness of the competition. You have to actually assess the sites holding the top positions. As far as the strength of the competition. Check out the sites in positions 1, 2, and 3. PR, age, number of backlinks and anchored keywords are all factors. However, there is no definitive formula to how stiff the competition is.