Do the searches of a keyword in Google or another search engine necessarily mean the top website results are actually competing for the term or does it mean that they have such a high pagerank and backlinks, Google will just display the website if it contains the terms in the keyword? I'm reading in some websites that there are certain parameters to type into Google to determine which websites are actually targetting that phrase. This interests me because a highly searched keyword that has 8,000,000 pages in Google may only have 1000 webpages that are actually competing furiously for the keyword, and the rest just contain the keyword.
If they contain the keyword on the page, it doesn't matter if they are purposely competing for it or not, they are obviously doing something right. I think I'm a little confused by what you are asking.
I heard that a search in Google with "inanchor:" leading the keyword could find the sites that are the most competitive in Google. A search for a keyword in Google with "inanchor:" leading it differs greatly from the results in an ordinary search. The inanchor search can sometimes yield 200 results, while the normal search might yield a couple million. Sometimes the top website in the SERPs don't relate to the searched term at all. They just appear as a high rank in Google because they have a high PR and tons of backlinks, and they just happen to have the keywords. Like, someone might search "Blue Lightning Widgets", and the title that comes up might be "Lightning-resistant products: A blue tool that is a widget". Yet, they still have a high page rank or is this just me?
The page rank has nothing to do with the search engine ranking.. I think thats where you might be getting confused.