Does the number of search results for a keyword affect the difficulty of ranking?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Nathan Veenstra: I wouldn’t mind the amount of search results. It’s about whether you (thinker you) can beat the top 10. That’s why I think KEI is a stupid metric.
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  Stockbridge Truslow: Yeah - definitely not a major thing. I`m not even sure it affects "Time to the Top" - but it`s definitely not a reliable indicator of competitiveness. Keep in mind that the total results are every page that contains all (or most) of the keywords (or typical variants of them). You could search for New Car and it would count a page that happens to mention the word "Car" and that also happens to mention "New" York. It also counts duplicate content pages, too. That`s a completely irrelevant page, but it will based purely upon keyword matching be put into the initial set of documents to be ranked. Also - only the first 200 (or something like that) results are actually ranked with all the various factors in play. Once you get past page 20 (or whatever it is), things are just sort of there. That`s also why you eventually hit a spot in the results where it just sort of "ends" before you get to the 250, 000th result and it tells you some results have been hidden due to the pages being similar. NOTE: My "200" number above is a guess. It was close to accurate 10 years ago, but I haven`t kept up with that in recent years so it may have changed. It is also likely (though I`m not sure) that different search terms may fully sort a larger or smaller number of results. I`d imagine for some search terms, you might only get 100 of the 10, 000 results or whatever for various reasons.
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  Dave Elliott: nah isn`t an issue at all. Look at Trustflow and number of linking root domains of the top 5-10 ranking positions to get an idea of how difficult it will be to rank for particular terms
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  Michael Martinez: The "number of search results" is actually a fiction. There is some sort of correlation between the number`s size and the actual amount of listings Google determines to be relevant but they have never explained why they publish that number. They have said in both public and private conversations (including one I had with former Googler Matt Cutts) that the numbers are meaningless and should be ignored.
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  Amed Osama Abraham: thanks a TON guys, this is very informative. I`m asking because I have a case where I own a partial match domain (in fact, an EMD but with a hyphen in the middle), I got the on-site seo for the keywords I want on-point with yoast like i normally do. an...Lihat Lainnya
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  Amed Osama Abraham: so, even if the site doesn`t get picked up on in the top 250 by just on-site seo, do I build the foundation links, profiles, citations as this will help establishing a ranking for it?
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  Michael Martinez: Don`t spend so much time looking at ranking reports. Instead, let the actual search referral data from Bing Webmaster Toolbox and Google Search Console guide you. Ranking estimates help you pick a set of keywords to target but once you start generating traffic the "rankings" will bounce all over the place. Focus on what is bringing in the traffic and strengthening that. The search engines will show you average rankings (and you can get better data by narrowing the reporting windows to 1 day).
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  Amed Osama Abraham: thanks much , I appreciate your input!