Amazon sellers often know which keywords matter, but not where shoppers drop out of the buying journey. The Amazon Search Query Performance report solves that problem by showing query-level activity from search volume and impressions through clicks, cart adds, and purchases.
Instead of treating a weak keyword as one broad problem, you can identify the exact funnel stage that needs attention. That makes the report useful for Amazon SEO, listing optimization, PPC prioritization, and market-share decisions.
Amazon Search Query Performance (SQP) is a Brand Analytics report for eligible brand-registered sellers. It compares total query activity with your brand or ASIN performance across impressions, clicks, cart adds, and purchases, helping you find whether a search opportunity is limited by visibility, click appeal, detail-page persuasion, or offer conversion.
What is Amazon Search Query Performance?
Amazon Search Query Performance is a dashboard inside Amazon Brand Analytics. It shows how shoppers interact with search queries and how much of that activity your brand or selected ASIN captures at each funnel stage.
The report starts with the query itself, then shows market-level activity and your corresponding share. You can review impressions, clicks, cart adds, purchases, median prices, and shipping-speed signals. Amazon also provides Search Query Score and Search Query Volume to help you understand relevance and demand.
This is different from a rank tracker. A rank tracker estimates where a product appears for a keyword. SQP shows what shoppers did for the query and how your brand or ASIN performed relative to the total query activity captured by Amazon.
Use SQP to answer four practical questions:
- Are relevant products appearing often enough for the query?
- When shoppers see the products, are they choosing to click?
- After clicking, are they adding the product to the cart?
- After adding it to the cart, are they completing the purchase?
Who can access the Amazon Search Query Performance dashboard?
The dashboard is designed for eligible sellers connected to a brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. Amazon states that Brand Analytics access requires a Professional selling account and Brand Representative status for an enrolled brand.
Example path for Seller Central is: Seller Central > Brands > Brand Analytics > Search Analytics > Search Query Performance. Amazon is known to change labels and navigation, so checkโthe actual path in your account before you publish/screenshot your internal documentation (SOPs).
To view and download the report:
- Sign in to Seller Central withโa user who has the necessary brand permissions.
- Click on Brands, then Brand Analytics.
- Select Search Analytics, and thenโSearch Query Performance.
- Click Brand View or ASIN View, โthen select the time period and product scope.
- Createโthe download and save the export for spreadsheet or BI analysis.
The direct dashboardโis login-protected. Access can also vary by marketplace, role, and account setup, so treat the menu path as a guideline to work with, not a cemented user interface rule.
Search Query Performance vs Amazon Search Term Report
The Amazon Search Term Report shows ad-click search terms from Sponsored Ads, while Search Query Performance shows broader search-funnel activity at brand or ASIN level inside Brand Analytics. They support different decisions and should not be treated as interchangeable reports.
Use the Amazon Search Term Report to harvest converting PPC queries, identify wasted spend, and add negative keywords. Use SQP to understand market demand, brand or ASIN share, and the stage where the search funnel is leaking.
| Report / tool | Main data source | Best used for | Key metrics | SalesDuo page owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search Query Performance | Brand Analytics / Seller Central | Market-level query funnel, brand/ASIN share, SEO and PPC prioritization | Query volume, impressions, clicks, CTR, cart adds, purchases, brand share, ASIN share | New SQP article |
| Search Term Report | Sponsored Ads reports | PPC keyword harvesting, negative keywords, spend efficiency | Customer search term, clicks, spend, orders, sales, ACoS, ROAS | Existing Search Term Report article |
| Search Catalog Performance | Brand Analytics / API reports | Catalog-level search engagement across a date range | Impressions, clicks, cart adds, purchases by catalog/search engagement | Mention only or future article |
| Brand Analytics broader suite | Amazon Brand Analytics | Market basket, item comparison, demographics, repeat purchase, and other brand reports where available | Depends on the selected dashboard | Existing Brand Analytics article |
Key metrics in the Amazon Search Query Performance Report
The most useful SQP metrics fall into five groups: query demand, visibility, click behavior, cart behavior, and purchase behavior. Read them as a sequence, because a weak result at one stage often explains the next stage.
| Metric | What it means | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Search Query Score | Amazonโs score for the query within the selected brand or ASIN view. | Use it to understand which queries are most relevant to the selected scope. |
| Search Query Volume | The number of times customers used the query during the selected period. | Use it as a demand signal, not as proof that the query is relevant or profitable. |
| Total Query Impressions | The total product impressions associated with the query. | Provides the market denominator for visibility analysis. |
| Brand or ASIN Impression Count | How many impressions your brand or selected ASIN received. | Shows the absolute visibility captured by your products. |
| Impression Share | Your brand or ASIN impressions divided by total query impressions. | Diagnoses whether the main problem is limited search visibility. |
| Total Click Count and Rate | Total clicks for the query and the market click rate. | Establishes how often shoppers click after seeing results. |
| Brand or ASIN Click Count and Share | Clicks captured by your brand or ASIN and its share of all query clicks. | Shows whether your search-result presentation earns shopper attention. |
| Cart Add Count, Rate, and Share | Total and brand/ASIN cart adds, plus market rate and your share. | Shows whether the detail page and offer are strong enough to create purchase intent. |
| Purchase Count, Rate, and Share | Total and brand/ASIN purchases, plus market purchase rate and your share. | Shows whether the product converts demand into completed orders. |
| Median Price Metrics | Median prices connected to clicks, cart adds, and purchases for the market and ASIN. | Helps compare price positioning at different funnel stages. |
| Shipping-Speed Counts | Same-day, one-day, and two-day counts connected to clicks, cart adds, or purchases. | Helps assess whether delivery speed may influence shopper behavior. |
| Brand View / ASIN View | Two scopes for comparing performance across the brand or for a selected product. | Use Brand View for portfolio strategy and ASIN View for product-level diagnosis. |
A share metric is most useful when paired with the related market total and rate. For example, low click share may result from weak impression share, weak click appeal, or both. Always compare adjacent funnel stages before assigning a cause.
How to use SQP data for Amazon SEO
Leverage SQP for Amazon SEO and pair each poor funnelโstage with a particular relevancy action or listing. We are notโtrying to stuff the listing with every high-volume query. The idea is to increase relevance and conversion for thoseโqueries that are a product fit and have enough demand to matter.
1. Find high-volume queries with low impression share
Start by focusing your Amazon PPC on relevant,โhigh-volume keywords with low competition and little to no brand or ASIN impression share. Isolate the query to the product, then optimize your product title/bullet points, backend terms, and content indexing for relevance. The Amazon search term optimization guide explains how to use supporting terms without duplicating them across fields.
2. Diagnose good visibility but weak click share
If impression share is strong but click share or CTR is weak, the listing is being viewed but not chosen. Check the main image, title clarity, visible price, coupon, rating, review count, badges, and variants layout. Use a structured Amazon product listing optimization process instead of changing several variables at once.
3. Diagnose clicks that do not become cart adds
Decent clicks with a poor add to cart rate often indicate a search intent or detail page issue. Verify if the size, material, quantity, compatibility, claims, and use case of the product align with the query. Reinforce bullets, images, comparison modules, and A+ Content around the objections that are relevant to that search intent.
4. Use purchase share to prioritize durable keyword themes
Queries with strong purchase share deserve ongoing support in listing content, advertising, and monitoring. Compare them with Amazon competitor keyword research to identify adjacent terms and competitor gaps, but keep the final keyword set tightly relevant to the product.
For each change, record the query, selected ASIN, baseline period, metric gap, listing change, launch date, and review date. This creates a repeatable SEO test rather than an untracked content rewrite.
How to use SQP data for Amazon PPC
Use SQP for PPC prioritization by locating queries where paid visibilityโcan amplify a clear market-share or organic aspiration. SQP is not a substitute for Sponsored Ads reporting, and it is not the appropriate report forโsearch-term harvesting or negative-keyword decisions.
Aโrealistic PPC workflow is:
- Target meaningful queriesโwith a clear demand and a measurable impression, click, or purchase-share gap.
- Check the listing before ramping up spend. Do not buy more traffic to a product that has an unresolved click or conversionโproblem.
- Run a Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands campaign to see if more qualified visibility will increase downstream share.
- Monitor paid metrics in Amazon Ads and review SQP movement month-over-month or week-over-week forโthe same ASIN-query.
- Keep reducing or stopping the test according to contribution margin, TACoS, conversion, and your targeted ranking or shareโgoal.
For campaign structure, bidding, and budget controls, use a broader Amazon PPC strategy. For real shopper queries, spend, orders, ACoS, ROAS, and negatives, go back to the Search Term Report rather than trying to cram those functions into SQP.
A high-volume query with low impression share could warrantโa visibility test if the relevance and economics are there. A query withโhigh click share and low purchase share generally requires work on the listing or the offer before more budget. A low-volume query with strong purchase share may make senseโfor a small controlled exact match campaign, just not a big one.
How to diagnose search funnel leakage with SQP
Funnel leakage is when consumers abandon their journey at a certain point in time between search and purchase. Diagnose the first significant gap in the sequence, and fix that stageโbefore you send more traffic into your funnel.
| SQP signal | Likely issue | Recommended SEO action | Recommended PPC / action step |
|---|---|---|---|
| High query volume + low brand impression share | Products are not visible enough for a valuable query. | Improve keyword relevance in title, bullets, backend terms, A+ Content, and Brand Story where appropriate. | Use Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands to increase visibility if economics support it. |
| Good impression share + low click share/CTR | Shoppers see the product but do not choose it. | Improve main image, title clarity, price positioning, reviews, coupon, and badge visibility. | Test placements and creative cautiously; do not assume bids alone will solve weak click appeal. |
| Good clicks + weak cart-add rate | The detail page may not match search intent or the offer is not compelling. | Fix bullets, images, comparison modules, claims, size/spec clarity, and A+ objections. | Reduce bids until listing conversion barriers are addressed. |
| Good cart adds + weak purchases | Price, shipping, trust, stock, coupon, or purchase friction may be hurting checkout. | Review offer, delivery promise, reviews, variation structure, inventory, and promotion strategy. | Coordinate a promotion, coupon, or retargeting test only if margins allow. |
| Strong purchase share on a low-volume query | The niche query is valuable but may not support large budgets. | Add natural long-tail language and supporting use-case content. | Use exact match with conservative budgets and monitor TACoS. |
Treat each diagnosis as a hypothesis. SQP can show where the gap appears, but it does not prove the cause. Confirm the likely cause with listing reviews, ad reports, price and inventory checks, customer feedback, and controlled tests.
Brand View vs ASIN View: When to use each
Use Brand View to understand portfolio-level query performance and share. Use ASIN View to diagnose how a specific product performs for the queries that lead shoppers to it.
| View | Best for | Questions it answers | Large-catalog example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand View | Category and portfolio strategy | Which queries matter across the brand? Where is the brand gaining or losing share? | A brand with 100 ASINs uses Brand View to identify five query themes that drive most search activity, then assigns ASIN owners to investigate. |
| ASIN View | Product-level optimization | Where does one ASIN lose impressions, clicks, cart adds, or purchases? | A product manager reviews one water-bottle ASIN to determine whether weak purchase share comes from listing mismatch, price, or delivery. |
Large catalogs should use a two-level process. Start in Brand View to identify high-impact query themes, then move to ASIN View for the products responsible for the gap. This prevents teams from downloading and reviewing every ASIN without a clear priority.
SQP workflow example
The following example uses hypothetical data for the query โstainless steel water bottle.โ The numbers illustrate the workflow and should not be treated as a benchmark.
| Metric | Hypothetical result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Search Query Volume | 25,000 | Large enough to evaluate, but relevance must still be confirmed. |
| ASIN Impression Share | 3.0% | The product captures limited visibility for a highly relevant term. |
| ASIN Click Share | 1.8% | Click share is below impression share, suggesting weak search-result appeal. |
| ASIN Cart Add Share | 1.5% | The gap continues after the click, so the detail page may not fully match intent. |
| ASIN Purchase Share | 0.9% | The largest loss is at purchase, pointing to offer, trust, price, shipping, or stock friction. |
Step 1: Make sureโitโs relevant. The item is truly stainless steel, and the size, insulation, lidโstyle, and use cases are the same as in the query. The phrase is still aโvalid priority.
Step 2: As numbersโare getting fixed. The team is comparing top products based on the main image, title, price visibility, rating, reviews, coupon, and delivery promise. It experiments with a more obvious main image and title rather than raising bids right away.
Step 3: Work onโthe detail page. The team includesโmore comprehensive insulation time, leak-resistance context, size, care instructions, and a comparison module. These changesโare meant to solve the problem a shopper typing in this query has, if they hesitate after clicking.
Step 4: Evaluateโthe offer. Whenโstock availability is the same here, the product price is not crazy higher than the market median (which we found is the case), and the shipping time is as quick as or better than competing offers. The team experiments withโa limited-time coupon and upgrades inventory placement prior to scaling traffic.
Step 5: Run a controlled PPCโtest. With the listing and offer refined, the group now bids for the query, using exact and phrase targeting, with a setโbudget and margin threshold. The report checks Amazon Ads results and contrastsโthe subsequent finished SQP period with the baseline.
The correct outcome is not necessarily a higher share at every stage. The goal is profitable improvement for a relevant query, with enough data to separate a real change from normal period-to-period noise.
Common mistakes when using Search Query Performance
The most frequent SQP errors result from considering the report as a complete answer,โrather than a single layer of diagnostics.
- Overreacting to short periods: Low-volumeโASINs can appear to have massive percentage moves from very few events. Compare completed periods and have sufficient volumeโto see a pattern.
- Discounting paid and organic context: SQP is aggregated from marketplace funnel activity, so consult ad reportsโand rank data to analyze what led to this outcome.
- Comparing weak-data ASINs:โTry not to elevate an ASIN simply because a share metric appears extreme when associated counts are small.
- Assuming every high-volume query is aโpriority: Volume doesnโt trump relevance, profit, inventory, or conversion potential.
- Mistaking SQP for ad search-term reports: SQP is diagonalizing a widerโquery funnel. Search Term Reports controlโthe shopper queries that clicked on the sponsored ads.
- Updating many listing things at once: You canโt tell which change influenced the funnel with a bunch of changes at once.
Tools, spreadsheets, and API options for SQP analysis
Small catalogs can manage SQP with Seller Central exports and a well-structured spreadsheet. Larger brands and agencies usually need a repeatable data model that stores periods, ASINs, queries, shares, rates, actions, and owners.
A good spreadsheet would have:โ
- Period of the report,โmarketplace, brand, ASIN, and search query
- Query volume vs queryโscore
- Impressions, clicks,โcart adds, and purchases total and for brand/ASIN
- Impression, click,โcart-add, and purchase shares
- Median price and shipping-speedโindicators
- Priority, probable issue, recommended action,โowner, status, review date
Develop filters for busy queries with low share, strong-click and weak-purchase queries, and long-tailโqueries with high purchase share. Use period-over-period comparisons only with comparable and full periods.
For automation reporting, Amazon added Search Query Performance and Search Catalog Performance as Analytics Report types in the Reports API on 26โFeb 2025. The official SP-API Analytics Reports documentation lists weekly, monthly, and quarterly reporting periods, report availability, and the SQP output fields.
An API or BI pipeline should retain the raw report, rename and normalize fieldโnames, monitor marketplace and period boundaries, and compute only those metrics your team can define uniformly. Addโdata-quality checks for missing periods, duplicate rows, weak queries, and changes to ASIN mapping.
Turn Amazon Search Query Performance into an action plan
Amazon Search Query Performance helps sellers identify where search visibility, clicks, cart adds, and purchases break down. Its value comes from connecting each gap to the right action, then checking the next completed period to see whether the change improved a relevant and profitable query.
Use SQP with ad reports, listing audits, inventory checks, pricing, and customer feedback. For hands-on support connecting search data to listing and campaign actions, explore SalesDuoโs Amazon SEO support.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Amazon Search Query Performance
1. What is Amazon Search Query Performance?
Amazon Search Query Performance is a Brand Analytics report that provides insights into market activity at the query level, enabling you to understand the percentage ofโthe market your brand or ASIN captures for that query in terms of impressions, clicks, carts, and purchases. It allows sellers to identify where they are losing shoppers in the search funnel.
2. Where is Search Query Performance in Amazon Seller Central?
A typical path is Seller Central > Brands > Brand Analytics > Search Analytics > Search QueryโPerformance. Amazon navigation is subject to change, so please check the latest path in yourโaccount.
3. Who can access the Amazon Search Query Performance dashboard?
Typically, eligible sellers require a Professional selling account, an enrolled brand in Amazon Brand Registry, and the applicable Brand Representative/Brand Analyticsโpermissions. Marketplace access and account access may differ.
4. What is the difference between Search Query Performance and the Amazon Search Term Report?
SQP shows the broader query funnel and brand or ASIN share inside Brand Analytics. The Amazon Search Term Report shows customer queries that triggered sponsored ads and received clicks, with PPC metrics such as spend, orders, ACoS, and ROAS.
5. How do you use Amazon Search Query Performance for SEO?
Use SQP to find relevant queries with low impression share, weak click share, poor cart-add rates, or weak purchase share. Match the gap to a specific action involving indexing, listing content, creative, price, offer, reviews, or delivery.
6. How do you use Search Query Performance for PPC?
Use SQP to prioritize paid tests around relevant queries with a clear visibility or share opportunity. Confirm listing quality and economics first, then use Amazon Ads reports to manage bids, spend, and conversion while SQP tracks the broader funnel.
7. What does click share mean in Amazon Search Query Performance?
Click share is the portion of total query clicks captured by your brand or selected ASIN. Compare it with impression share to see whether shoppers are choosing your product at a rate that matches its visibility.
8. What does purchase share mean in Amazon Search Query Performance?
Purchase share is the portion of total purchases for the query captured by your brand or selected ASIN. It is a market-share signal, not the same as your product conversion rate.
9. How often should sellers review SQP data?
Review SQP on a consistent weekly or monthly cadence based on volume and decision speed. Use completed, comparable periods and avoid major changes from a small number of clicks, cart adds, or purchases.
10. Can agencies or large brands automate SQP reporting?
Yes. Teams can use manual exports, spreadsheet connectors, BI pipelines, or the SP-API Analytics Report type. Automation still requires governance for permissions, period alignment, data quality, ASIN mapping, and action ownership.
About the Author
Meet Aryan Suyal, an SEO Content Writer Intern at SalesDuo who excels at turning patterns into precise, on-point content. He brings sharp insights and analytical thinking, along with a builder's instinct for creating systems that help ideas work smarter. Outside of work, you'll find him getting lost in books, tinkering with and building AI systems, or losing hours to a good documentary.
