The summer is only half over, but search queries including ‘Back to School’ are on the rise and the share of variations have increased 28% for the week ending July 17, 2010 year-over-year. Over the past 2 years, the peak of the Back to School searches has occurred in mid-August – the week ending August 18, 2008 and the week ending August 22, 2009.

The top variations of Back to School related searches were around content – looking for ideas & quotes and shopping – sales, supplies and lists. In August last year, the top search variation was for back to school activities and searches for bulletin boards were also popular. Not surprisingly, shopping related terms were more competitive in terms of paid search with 63% of clicks for ‘back to school supplies’ coming from paid search and 70% for ‘back to school shopping list’.

When looking at the Back to School variations ranked by paid clicks, the trend toward shopping-related terms becomes even more apparent with the top paid 10 terms – supplies, shopping list and clothes. The sales opportunities during the Back to School season is likely to be worth the investment in paid campaigns or to seek out affiliates and other partners to help manage costs.