How to Use Amazon Search Query Performance Reports

For years, understanding what Amazon shoppers searched for was a sophisticated guessing game. Sellers relied on third-party tools, which offered estimations but lacked the precision of first-party data. The introduction of Amazon's Search Query Performance (SQP) report changed this dynamic entirely, offering a direct view into consumer behavior.

This report provides brand owners with unfiltered access to the exact search terms shoppers use to find products. More importantly, it details a brand's market share for critical metrics: impressions, clicks, add-to-carts, and purchases. For established brands, the SQP report is less a dashboard and more a strategic tool for refining advertising and SEO. Analyzing amazon search query performance at the query level enables precise budget allocation and identifies organic ranking opportunities competitors often miss.

Decoding First-Party Customer Data

If you're a brand owner, the SQP report helps sharpen your advertising and SEO. When you understand your performance at the individual query level, you can make surgical decisions about your budget and pinpoint where ad spend is being wasted. It also illuminates organic ranking opportunities your competitors are likely overlooking.

This guide provides a clear framework for analyzing the SQP report and translating its metrics into tangible changes that improve profitability. The focus is on diagnosing funnel weaknesses and implementing data-backed optimizations.

1. From Data to Insights

Viewing data alone doesn't grow a business. The objective is to transition from passively reviewing numbers to actively making strategic decisions that drive profitable growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what the Search Query Performance report looks like inside Seller Central:

The dashboard presents your brand’s performance for specific search terms across critical customer actions.

Here’s what we’ll focus on:

• Diagnosing Performance Gaps: Pinpoint exactly where you're losing customers in the sales funnel, from initial impression to final purchase.

• Implementing Optimizations: Apply data-backed changes to your PPC campaigns and product detail pages.

• Measuring Impact: Track improvements in market share and profitability over time to validate your changes.

To maximize customer data, it helps to understand how different touchpoints lead to a sale. Concepts like Attribution Modeling can add another layer to your analysis. If you'd prefer an expert team to apply these insights for you, our Amazon management services can help.

Locating the SQP Report

First, you need to find this data. The Search Query Performance report is located within the Brand Analytics dashboard in Seller Central.

Once inside, Amazon provides different ways to view the data. This is where strategy begins.

Knowing which view to use, and when, is the first step. Each tells a different story about your performance.

1. Brand vs. ASIN Views

You'll toggle between two main perspectives: Brand View and ASIN View. Each offers a unique lens for examining customer behavior and your market position.

• Brand View: This is your high-level overview. It shows up to 1,000 of the top search queries for your entire product line. It's ideal for spotting broad market trends and assessing overall brand performance for critical search terms.

• ASIN View: This is the detailed view. The ASIN view provides granular data, showing the top 100 search queries driving traffic to a single product. It's your primary tool for fine-tuning individual listings and making precise adjustments to ad campaigns.

A common mistake is remaining solely in Brand View. While useful for the big picture, actionable insights that impact a specific product are almost always found at the ASIN level.

2. Setting Your Timeframe

Context is critical, so setting the right date range is important. You can adjust the reporting period to be weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

Shorter windows, like a weekly view, are effective for measuring the immediate impact of a price change or a new ad campaign.

Longer timeframes, such as monthly or quarterly, are used to identify seasonality and broader performance trends. Comparing this quarter to the last can reveal whether you're gaining or losing market share.

3. Understanding Data Columns

After selecting your view and date range, you'll see a table of metrics. Understanding these columns is foundational.

• Search Query: The exact phrase a customer typed into the Amazon search bar.

• Search Query Volume: Amazon’s internal ranking of a query's popularity, which serves as a gauge of customer demand.

• Impressions, Clicks, Add to Carts, Purchases: These columns represent the total market volume for a given search query, not just your brand's data.

• Your Brand's Share (%): This column shows your brand's portion of each market-wide metric. It indicates your performance against all other brands for that specific search term.

Analyzing Performance Metrics

The value of the Search Query Performance report comes from using its numbers to analyze your business. Data by itself is just a spreadsheet. By calculating simple performance ratios, you can uncover the customer journey and identify points of friction.

This process turns a standard report into a strategic roadmap for your Amazon search query performance.

This analysis moves beyond basic metrics to show you the real friction points in your sales funnel. You'll stop guessing and start making data-backed decisions on everything from your main image to your shipping options.

1. Uncovering Funnel Drop-offs

A common scenario is a solid impression share but a weak click share for a relevant, high-volume query. This indicates that shoppers see your product but don't click on it.

• Low Click Share vs. Impression Share: This almost always points to an issue with your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) presence. Your main image, title, price, or review count isn’t compelling enough compared to competitors.

• Low Add-to-Cart Share vs. Click Share: The shopper clicked but didn't add the item to their cart. The issue is likely on your product detail page. Potential culprits include blurry secondary images, weak bullet points, or insufficient A+ Content.

• Low Purchase Share vs. Add-to-Cart Share: This drop-off signals a significant conversion blocker. Shoppers added your product to their cart but didn't complete the purchase. Common issues are uncompetitive pricing, slow shipping speeds, or a pattern of negative reviews.

The gap between Add-to-Cart Share and Purchase Share is one of the most critical leaks in the sales funnel. Fixing this gap can immediately improve profitability without generating new traffic.

Below is a simple framework to connect metrics to necessary actions.

2. SQP Metric Diagnostic Framework

Use this table to interpret performance metrics and identify potential issues with your listings or campaigns.

Use this table as a quick reference. When you spot a leak in your funnel, refer back to identify the cause and the solution.

3. Prioritizing with Search Volume

For years, sellers relied on third-party tools to estimate keyword volume. While helpful, they were never Amazon's own data. The 'Search Query Volume' metric in the SQP report is Amazon's ranking of a term's popularity, making it the most reliable source for prioritizing optimization efforts.

Recent data from Q1 2026 showed that for a common product like pillows, a single search term could generate 185 total clicks across the platform. This gives you an idea of the scale you’re working with.

Emerging sellers often find their brand captures only 5-10% of these actions before optimization. This first-party data allows you to eliminate waste and turn raw stats into growth. If this seems overwhelming, our expert Amazon Ads management services can help you develop a winning strategy.

Consider a term like "down alternative pillow." Even if your brand only captures a 2% share of clicks on a query with massive volume, that small percentage could represent thousands of dollars. Amazon's data is a direct reflection of real-world customer demand and should guide your strategy.

From SQP Insights to Optimizations

Analyzing your Amazon Search Query Performance report is only the first step. The next is to translate those numbers into concrete actions that reduce waste and increase sales. This is where data analysis informs practical changes to your ads and organic presence.

The SQP report acts as a guide. High-performing queries indicate where to focus new PPC campaigns, while irrelevant terms pinpoint where you're wasting ad spend. Your top organic queries provide the language for a product listing that resonates with shoppers.

1. PPC Campaign Refinements

Your SQP data is invaluable for PPC optimization because it reflects actual, market-wide customer behavior, not just the traffic interacting with your ads.

Build High-Intent Manual Campaigns
First, identify queries where your brand has a high purchase share or a click-through rate that exceeds the market average. These are your proven winners.

Move these exact queries into their own manual campaigns using phrase and exact match types. This provides precise control over your bids, allowing you to allocate more budget to terms you know will convert.

Use Negative Keywords Effectively
Next, scan your report for queries that generate clicks but have a zero percent purchase share. These are draining your budget.

If a term like "organic cotton dog bed" is getting clicks for your standard, non-organic product, you must act quickly. Add "organic cotton" as a negative phrase match immediately. This simple change can significantly improve your ACoS.

2. Organic Listing and SEO Changes

Your top search queries are customers telling you what they want to buy. Integrating their language into your listing is a powerful SEO strategy.

Integrate Top Queries into Titles and Bullets
Identify your highest-volume, most relevant query. Then, examine your product title. If that query isn't featured prominently, you have a significant opportunity.

For example, if your title is "Premium Bamboo Pillow," but the SQP report shows the top query is "cooling pillow for side sleepers," it’s time for a change.

• Old Title: Premium Bamboo Pillow – Queen Size

• New Title: Cooling Pillow for Side Sleepers, Queen Size Bamboo Pillow

This small adjustment aligns your listing with what most shoppers are searching for.

Address Pricing and Conversion Blockers
A metric to focus on is the gap between Add-to-Cart (ATC) Share and Purchase Share. A high ATC share that doesn't convert to purchases indicates a serious revenue leak.

Analyses in 2026 show this is a common problem. We saw purchase counts on high-volume queries that were a fraction of the ATCs, all due to drop-offs after the product was added to the cart. The report's median price columns can also reveal pricing issues. If the market median is $20 and your product is priced at $35, your conversion rate will likely suffer unless your branding and images justify the premium.

These principles are universal. It’s always a good idea to learn how to improve ecommerce conversion rates, as the same strategies apply directly to the Amazon ecosystem.

Developing a Consistent SQP Strategy

The Amazon Search Query Performance report is not a one-time tool. Its real value is realized when it becomes the foundation of an ongoing strategy. A recurring audit cycle is the only way to stay ahead of competitors who are constantly refining their approaches.

For most brands, a monthly or quarterly review is effective. This frequency is sufficient to catch important trends without overreacting to minor daily fluctuations. The process is straightforward: pull the latest report, compare key share metrics against the previous period's numbers, and identify new opportunities or unresolved issues.

1. Building a Regular Habit

A sudden drop in your impression share for a top-performing query requires immediate attention. It often means a new, aggressive competitor has entered the market or an existing rival has increased their ad spend. Without regular reviews, such a shift could go unnoticed for months, costing you significant market share.

The SQP Report provides up to 1,000 search queries in the brand view, a valuable source of first-party search data that surpasses third-party tool estimates. We've seen brands use this to identify what seemed like minor quarterly volume dips, such as a 1.75% decrease in search volume that also corresponded with drops in their impression and purchase shares. That seemingly small number prompted an immediate strategic pivot.

For smaller brands, this data helps pinpoint keywords where total clicks are high, but their click share is below 15%, often due to a price mismatch. By comparing this against ACoS, they can overhaul listings with high impression share but poor conversions or fix checkout issues on products with strong add-to-cart rates. To see how agencies use this data to prioritize campaigns, you can watch this deep-dive video.

2. Your SQP Audit Checklist

To prevent your reviews from becoming overwhelming, stick to a core set of diagnostic questions each time. This transforms a large task into a sharp, repeatable process.

• Keyword Performance: What new queries entered our top 100? Did any long-time winners drop off?

• Funnel Weak Points: For our most important terms, has the gap between our click share and our purchase share widened or narrowed?

• Competitive Positioning: Is our overall brand impression share in our main category increasing or decreasing?

• Wasted Spend: Are new, irrelevant queries consuming our ad budget with clicks but no sales? It's time to add them to our negative keyword lists.

This proactive cycle keeps your brand agile. It allows you to adapt your strategy based on the most current customer behavior data Amazon provides. A structured audit is essential for maintaining and growing your market position, and any top-tier Amazon product ranking service builds its strategy around this exact loop.

Common SQP Report Questions

The Amazon Search Query Performance report is powerful, but questions are common. Let's address the most frequent inquiries from sellers.

1. How often should I analyze my SQP report?

For most brands, analyzing this report once a month is optimal. It's frequent enough to catch market shifts without overreacting to daily data noise.

This is not a strict rule.

• High-Volume Sellers: If you sell a lot of products or are in a highly competitive niche, a bi-weekly review is better. This is especially true during Q4 or leading up to events like Prime Day.

• Long-Term Strategy: Everyone should conduct a quarterly review. This is where you identify larger trends, like seasonality and long-term changes in your amazon search query performance.

Consistency is key. A regular schedule builds a reliable baseline, making it easier to determine if your optimizations are effective.

2. What is the difference between SQP and PPC search term reports?

Understanding this distinction is crucial and can significantly impact your strategy.

Your PPC Search Term Report is exclusively about your paid ads. It shows the exact customer searches that led to a click on one of your Sponsored Product ads. It's a narrow view of your paid traffic.

The Search Query Performance report, in contrast, is comprehensive. It combines organic and paid data, showing your brand's total share of voice for a given search query. You see your portion of the entire market's activity for a term, not just your ad's performance.

Use the PPC report for tactical ad adjustments, like changing a bid on a specific keyword. Use the SQP report to shape your overall market strategy, from SEO and listing updates to new product development.

3. Can I use SQP data for new product launches?

Absolutely. It’s one of the report's most powerful and underutilized applications, serving as a tool for product research and validation.

Here's how: run the SQP report on a close competitor's ASIN. You can uncover high-volume search queries that prove customers are actively searching for a product like the one you plan to launch.

Look for terms with significant purchase volume where the top products have clear weaknesses, such as mediocre reviews, high prices, or poor images.

This data accomplishes two critical things:

1. It validates your product idea with real market data.

2. It provides the exact keywords to target from day one for both your listing and your launch PPC campaigns.

4. What if my share is zero for a high-volume query?

Don't panic. A 0% share for a relevant, high-volume query is not a failure; it's a significant opportunity.

It means your product is essentially invisible for that search term, both organically and in ads. Shoppers aren't finding you.

First, confirm that the query is a perfect match for your product. If it is, it’s time to be aggressive.

Your action plan should be two-pronged. Immediately create a new, highly targeted PPC campaign focused on that exact search term. Simultaneously, integrate that query into your product listing's title, bullet points, and backend search terms. You've just identified an untapped customer segment that wants your product. Go get them.