If you’re not using Amazon Search Query Performance, you’re likely leaving valuable growth opportunities on the table.

Amazon gives brands an enormous amount of first-party data through the Search Query Performance dashboard, commonly referred to as SQP. It can show you what shoppers are searching for, how much demand exists for a keyword, how many purchases your brand captures, and ultimately how much of that keyword’s market your brand owns.

That makes SQP much more than another Seller Central report.

Used properly, it can become a framework for SEO, advertising, conversion-rate optimization, pricing, and market-share growth.

We built our own SQP dashboard more than a year ago and have continued expanding it as part of our internal tech stack. More importantly, we’ve incorporated SQP into advertising operations so that Amazon Ads decisions aren’t made using advertising data alone.

In this guide, we’ll cover what Amazon Search Query Performance is, how it differs from Top Search Terms, the metrics that matter most, and how to combine SQP with Amazon Ads data.

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1. What Is Amazon Search Query Performance?

Search Query Performance is an Amazon Brand Analytics report that provides query-level data showing how shoppers interact with search results and how your brand performs within those searches.

Instead of looking only at your own sales or advertising performance, SQP gives you visibility into both:

• Total Amazon search activity for a query
• Your brand’s performance within that query

That distinction is what makes the report so useful.

For example, knowing that your brand generated 40 purchases from a keyword is useful.

Knowing that the keyword generated 400 total purchases across Amazon and your brand captured 40 of them is significantly more useful.

Now you know your brand captured approximately 10% of purchases associated with that search query.

That gives sellers something most advertising reports cannot provide directly: market context.

Search Query Performance can help answer questions such as:

• How large is the search demand for this keyword?
• How many purchases does the keyword generate?
• What percentage of those purchases is our brand capturing?
• Are shoppers seeing our products but not clicking?
• Are they clicking but not adding products to cart?
• Are they adding to cart but not purchasing?
• Are our advertising priorities aligned with the keywords that actually matter to the category?

Instead of looking at performance in isolation, SQP lets you compare your brand against the broader Amazon marketplace.

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2. Search Query Performance vs. Top Search Terms

Before Search Query Performance, Amazon sellers had much less visibility into keyword-level category performance.

One of the primary tools available through Brand Analytics was Top Search Terms.

Top Search Terms can still be useful, but its scope is much narrower.

It primarily gives sellers visibility into metrics such as click share and conversion share for the leading products associated with a search term.

Search Query Performance goes considerably deeper.

With SQP, Amazon exposes data throughout more of the shopping funnel, including:

Search volume → Impressions → Clicks → Cart Adds → Purchases

And crucially, it provides both category-level totals and your brand’s contribution.

That allows you to move beyond questions like:

“Which products are receiving the most clicks?”

and start asking:

“How much of this entire keyword market does my brand actually own?”

That is a major difference.

Top Search Terms gives you a useful snapshot of competitive search behavior.

Search Query Performance gives you a framework for understanding the entire search funnel.

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3. The Most Important Search Query Performance Metrics

SQP contains a lot of columns.

That does not mean every metric deserves equal attention.

When analyzing Search Query Performance, there are three metrics I consider foundational:

Search Volume

Search volume tells you how frequently shoppers are searching a particular query during the selected period.

This gives you the demand denominator for almost everything else.

A keyword might look attractive because your brand converts well for it, but if the search demand is tiny, the opportunity may also be limited.

Conversely, a high-volume keyword where your brand has very little presence could represent a meaningful growth opportunity.

Search volume helps you understand how big the pond is before evaluating how much of it you own.

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Brand Purchases by Keyword

Search volume tells you about demand.

Purchases tell you what actually converts and responsible for your sales.

One of the first things we look at is how many purchases the brand is capturing from each search query.

This can reveal something advertising dashboards sometimes obscure.

A keyword might generate plenty of paid orders, but what does the brand’s total performance look like for that search term?

SQP helps you evaluate the keyword from the broader brand perspective rather than only through an advertising attribution window.

That is especially important when your goal is not simply lower ACoS, but overall Amazon growth.

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Market Share by Keyword

This is where SQP becomes particularly powerful.

By comparing your brand’s purchase performance with total query purchases, you can evaluate the percentage of the keyword market your brand is capturing.

Zum Beispiel:

If a query generates 1,000 purchases and your brand receives 80 purchases, your purchase share is approximately:

80 ÷ 1,000 = 8%

Now repeat that calculation month after month.

Suddenly, instead of simply asking whether sales increased, you can ask:

Are we gaining or losing market share for the keywords that matter?

That is a much more strategic question.

If sales rise 10% but the entire category grows 30%, your brand may actually be losing ground.

Likewise, sales could remain relatively flat while your market share increases because the overall keyword market contracted.

SQP gives you the context needed to distinguish between those situations.

This is why we pay close attention to month-over-month market-share movement, particularly on strategic keywords being supported through advertising.

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4. Secondary SQP Metrics Worth Watching

Search volume, purchases, and market share provide the high-level picture.

But SQP becomes even more valuable when you start diagnosing why a brand is gaining or losing share.

That is where the secondary funnel metrics come in.

Impressions

Impressions tell you whether your products are actually receiving visibility for a query.

If search volume is substantial but your brand impression share is low, the problem may begin with visibility.

Potential areas to investigate could include:

• SEO & copy
• Advertising coverage
• Indexation
• Relevanz

Before worrying about conversion rate, make sure shoppers are actually seeing the product.

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Clicks and CTR

Once shoppers see your product, the next question is whether they click.

Your click-through rate (CTR) can help identify whether your listing is competitive within the search results.

A weak CTR may point toward factors such as:

• Main image
• Price
• Ratings
• Review count
• Coupon or promotion visibility
• Title
• Overall offer competitiveness

SQP allows you to look at this relative to the broader query instead of evaluating your listing in isolation.

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Cart Adds

Cart adds are one of the more interesting middle-funnel metrics in Search Query Performance.

They help bridge the gap between clicks and purchases.

If customers are clicking and adding the product to cart but not completing purchases, that could point toward a different issue than low CTR.

Potential factors could include pricing, delivery estimates, competitive offers, or simply shoppers reconsidering their purchase.

The important point is that SQP allows you to see where shoppers are dropping out of the funnel.

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Umrechnungskurs

Conversion rate becomes particularly useful when you compare your brand’s performance against the overall query.

Instead of simply asking:

“Is our conversion rate good?”

you can ask:

“Is our conversion rate competitive for this specific keyword?”

Those are very different questions.

A 10% conversion rate might look acceptable in isolation.

But if the overall category is converting at 18% for that query, there may be room for improvement.

On another keyword, the market may convert at only 7%, meaning your 10% conversion rate is relatively strong.

Context matters.

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Median Price

Pricing is another useful contextual metric available through SQP.

Looking at the median price associated with a query can help you understand the competitive environment surrounding that keyword.

Suppose your product sells for $39.99 while products receiving most purchases for the query cluster closer to $24.99.

That does not automatically mean you should lower your price.

But it provides important context when interpreting CTR, cart adds, and conversion performance.

Pricing, SEO, creative, reviews, and advertising all interact with SQP performance.

That is why we generally avoid evaluating these metrics independently.

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Brand ASIN Data vs. Category Data

One of the most valuable aspects of Search Query Performance is the ability to compare your own performance with Amazon’s total query performance.

That comparison creates the real insight.

Looking only at your brand tells you what happened.

Looking at the category tells you how your performance compares with the market in which it happened.

This is particularly useful for tracking:

• Impression share
• Click share
• Cart-add share
• Purchase share
• CTR
• Conversion rate
• Market-share changes

Over time, those comparisons help identify exactly where your brand is winning or losing shoppers.

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5. Syncing Search Query Performance With Amazon Ads

This is where SQP becomes much more actionable.

Amazon Ads tells you what happened inside your advertising campaigns.

Search Query Performance tells you what happened across the broader Amazon search ecosystem.

Combine the two, and you get a much more complete view of keyword performance.

For every strategically important keyword, we want to know things such as:

Are we advertising on it?

How much are we spending?

What is our advertising conversion rate?

How much total search demand exists?

How many purchases does the category generate?

How many purchases does our brand capture?

What percentage of the keyword market do we own?

And most importantly: is that market share increasing over time?

That last question can materially change how you evaluate advertising.

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Moving Beyond ACoS

Consider a keyword where ACoS increases slightly.

Looking only at the advertising dashboard, you might decide to reduce bids.

But suppose SQP shows that during the same period:

• Brand purchase share increased
• Total purchases increased
• Organic visibility improved
• Your brand captured more of the keyword market

The strategic picture suddenly looks different.

Likewise, a keyword can produce an excellent advertising ACoS while your total market share remains stagnant.

Advertising efficiency alone does not tell you whether the brand is actually strengthening its position within the category.

This is why we prefer to look beyond ACoS and evaluate advertising within the context of total business performance and market share.

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Using SQP to Prioritize Keywords

Combining advertising and SQP data can also help determine where budget should be concentrated.

You can start identifying situations such as:

High search volume + low market share
Potential growth opportunity.

High relevance + strong conversion + low advertising coverage
Potential advertising gap.

Heavy ad spend + stagnant market share
May warrant deeper investigation.

Strong market-share growth + improving organic ranking
Potential evidence that the broader strategy is working.

High impressions + weak CTR
Creative or offer competitiveness may require attention.

Strong CTR + weak conversion
The listing, price, reviews, or offer may need further analysis.

Instead of optimizing advertising exclusively around campaign metrics, you’re connecting ad spend to the actual marketplace outcome you’re trying to influence.

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Search Query Performance Should Be Part of Your Amazon Strategy

Amazon sellers have access to more first-party search data than ever before.

The challenge is no longer simply getting the data.

It is knowing which metrics matter and what to do with them.

For us, Search Query Performance comes down to a few fundamental questions:

How much demand exists?

How many purchases are we capturing?

How much market share do we own?

Where are shoppers dropping out of the funnel?

And are our advertising efforts helping us capture more of the market?

When you consistently track those questions, SQP stops being another Seller Central report.

It becomes a decision-making tool for Amazon Ads, SEO, pricing, conversion optimization, and category growth.

And considering the amount of first-party data Amazon is giving brands through the Search Query Performance dashboard, it remains one of the most underutilized resources available to Amazon sellers.