January to March carries 31.1% of the year's school search in Coimbatore, against the 25% a flat year would give. March alone runs 1.43 times a flat month and August 0.71. Start building in September, spend hardest from January, and treat August as the floor.
31.1%
of annual school search falls January to March, against a flat-year 25%
1.43x
March against a flat month, the peak
0.71x
August against a flat month, the floor
Your admission season and your parents' search season are not the same season. When a marketing calendar is built from the first, the money lands in the wrong months.
We pulled the full search history for five Coimbatore school-choice keywords and worked out what share of each year's volume landed in each month. Three complete years, 2023 to 2025. Four of the five keywords peak between January and March.
When do parents actually search for a school?
March is the busiest month, carrying 11.95% of annual volume across the five keywords. August is the quietest at 5.92%. March runs 2.02 times August.
The useful way to read a seasonal curve is against a flat year, where every month carries 8.33%. That comparison separates windows that are genuinely concentrated from windows that only look busy because they are long.
| Window | Months | Measured share | Flat-year share | Ratio to flat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September to March | 7 | 61.4% | 58.3% | 1.05x |
| April to August | 5 | 38.6% | 41.7% | 0.93x |
| January to March | 3 | 31.1% | 25.0% | 1.24x |
| March, the peak | 1 | 11.95% | 8.33% | 1.43x |
| August, the floor | 1 | 5.92% | 8.33% | 0.71x |
Why is the September to March window weaker than it looks?
Seven months out of twelve is already 58.3% of a flat year. A window carrying 61.4% is running at 1.05 times flat, which is a nudge rather than a season.
Seven months sounds like a season. It is not one you can act on, because a window that long collects most of the year whatever the shape underneath it. The concentration that survives the test is three months, not seven.
How the flat-year column works
100 divided by 12 gives 8.33% a month. Every measured share here comes from the same study of five Coimbatore school-choice keywords.
"January to March carries 31.1% of annual school search in Coimbatore against the 25% a flat year would give, while the wider September to March window runs at only 1.05 times flat"
How does this compare with engineering admission search?
It runs on an opposite calendar, which is why a school cannot borrow a college's plan. These are two separate studies of two different populations, and neither licenses a claim about the other.
| School search, Coimbatore | Engineering admission, Tamil Nadu | |
|---|---|---|
| Sample | n=5 keywords | n=10 keywords |
| Peak window | January to March | May to August |
| August | the floor, 5.92% | at or near the peak |
| September | climbing | below August in 9 of 10 keywords |
If you run both a school and a college, you are running two calendars, and the college one is set out in when engineering admission search peaks.
Free admission funnel audit. Your site, your ads, and your follow-up.
What should the marketing calendar look like across the year?
Work backwards from March rather than forwards from your admission notification. We think a parent builds the shortlist before the notification exists, and a school invisible at that stage rarely gets added later.
- 1
September to October. Rebuild the basics. Enquiry path, phone number, fees, current photographs
- 2
November to December. Start visibility work while the climb is early and competition thinner
- 3
January to March. The concentrated window at 1.24 times flat. Spend hardest here
- 4
March. Highest single month. Run what works rather than launching something new
- 5
April to June. The tail of the intake, and the paperwork
- 6
July to August. The floor. Fix, measure and build for September
Which half of this is measured
The ordering follows the measured curve across five keywords. The specific tasks against each window are our judgment, not a finding.
One warning before you touch the ad account. Google describes seasonality adjustments as suited to events of roughly a week, so the January to March window is far longer than what the tool was built for. Read Google's note on seasonality adjustments first.
"Use seasonality adjustments only if you expect major changes to conversion rates, because Smart Bidding already manages seasonal events"
If you want the funnel underneath the calendar checked rather than the calendar alone, that is what our admission funnel audit covers.
How hard is it to rank for these searches?
Of the five Coimbatore keywords we measured, three sit at an Ahrefs difficulty of 5 or below on a 100 point scale. The two most generic sit at 28 and 30.
Where the difficulty line comes from
The 5 line is our own cut, not an external standard, and Ahrefs difficulty is a third-party estimate rather than a Google figure. Read it as a rough ordering of contest, not a score.
The ordering is the finding. Terms that name a board are the least contested, while the generic terms are where the competition sits, and in our experience those are the ones a school optimises for first.
Getting found is half of it. The other half is what a parent meets on arrival, which we measured on a different population, 30 Tamil Nadu engineering college homepages.
How do you check this for your own school?
Do not take a Coimbatore average as your own curve. Google's guidance on Trends is to publish a little before people search, and it warns that trends differ by market and should be analysed separately. Start at Google's guide to Trends.
- Pull twenty-four months of Search Console impressions for your school's queries and plot them by month
- Compare each month against 8.33%, the flat-year share, rather than against the month before
- Separate board-specific queries from generic ones, because they peak differently
- Log when your enquiry forms fire, not only when impressions rise
"The source of truth for Search performance will always be Search Console, while the source of truth for behavior inside your site will be Google Analytics"
That split matters here. Impressions tell you when parents looked, and only your own analytics tells you when they acted, which is why the two sets of numbers differ.
Once the curve is right, the next constraint is usually the enquiry path, measured separately in how to increase admission enquiries.
Key takeaways
- January to March carries 31.1% of annual school search in Coimbatore against a flat-year 25%, a ratio of 1.24, on five keywords
- The September to March window carries 61.4% but runs at only 1.05 times flat, so it is a weak framing
- March is the peak at 11.95% of annual volume and August the floor at 5.92%, a ratio of 2.02
- Engineering admission search in Tamil Nadu peaks May to August, the opposite calendar, on a separate study of ten keywords
- Three of the five keywords sit at an Ahrefs difficulty of 5 or below, and the 5 line is our own cut
- Build from September, spend hardest January to March, and verify the curve against your own Search Console data
Frequently asked
When should a school start its admission marketing?
September. Demand climbs from the August floor of 5.92% toward the March peak of 11.95%, measured on five Coimbatore keywords, so September gives six months of build before the busiest month. The window that matters most is January to March.
What is the busiest month for school search in Coimbatore?
March, carrying 11.95% of annual volume across the five keywords we measured over three complete years. Against a flat year, where each month carries 8.33%, March runs at 1.43 times.
What is the quietest month?
August, at 5.92% of annual volume on five keywords, which is 0.71 times a flat month. March runs 2.02 times August. It is the natural month for fixing the site rather than buying attention.
Is September to March really the season?
It carries 61.4% of the year on our five keywords, but seven months of a flat year carry 58.3% anyway, so the window runs at only 1.05 times flat. The genuine concentration is January to March at 1.24 times flat.
Is it too late if I start in January?
Late, but not too late. January to March still carries 31.1% of annual demand. What you give up is the September to December build, when competition for these terms is thinner and the work has time to take effect.
Do these findings apply outside Coimbatore?
We measured Coimbatore only, on five keywords. The direction is plausibly similar across Tamil Nadu because the academic calendar is shared, but we have not measured that and will not claim it.
Sources
- 1.Coimbatore school search seasonality study, Kula Digital
- 2.Tamil Nadu engineering admission search seasonality study, Kula Digital
- 3.About seasonality adjustments, Google Ads Help
- 4.Get started with Google Trends, Google Search Central
- 5.Using Search Console and Google Analytics data for SEO, Google Search Central
Adith Krishnan
Co-Founder & COO, Kula Digital
8+ years building marketing that is measured in revenue. Runs strategy, AI search visibility, and education marketing at Kula. Written from the studio in Coimbatore.