allintitle vs intitle, which one do you use for keyword research?

i'd also try intitle:"the full phrase" in quotes. it sits between the two and is often closer to what you're actually checking. but honestly i stopped trusting the counts much. the top 10 tells you more: if those titles all match the phrase and the pages are strong, the count barely matters.

allintitle. intitle only checks the one word right after it, the rest of the query can be anywhere on the page. allintitle needs every word in the title, which is closer to "how many pages are actually targeting this". treat the count as a rough signal though, google's numbers on those operators wobble a lot.