School is barely out for the summer, but the Back to School season is right around the corner again. Search queries that include the phrase ‘back to school’ begin to ramp up during the month of July, peak in early August, and end in mid-September. Last year, the Back to School season was negatively impacted by consumers pulling back on spending, after suffering through high gas prices during the summer and the imminent economic downturn.

Last year’s peak of searches containing ‘back to school’ occurred during the week ending August 16, 2008. The three dominant themes within the top ten search terms were fashion & hairstyles, activity & craft ideas and sweepstakes. The success rates (meaning the % of the searches that resulted in a visit to a website) for the sweepstakes related searches highlight the awareness of the promotions and ease with which consumers were able to seek out the sweepstakes online with meaningful results. The share of traffic being driven by paid clicks was only 4%, suggesting that there are many opportunities to employ a paid search campaign for marketers looking to target this audience.