Short version: Search Query Performance (SQP) is Amazon's own record of how shoppers move from a search query to a purchase for your products — impressions, clicks, cart adds, and purchases, plus your share of each step against every other seller who showed up for that query. It requires Brand Registry, lives in Brand Analytics, and is the earliest first-party signal that a listing is losing visibility, usually weeks before the sales dashboard shows it.
Most sellers check Brand Analytics for sales and traffic totals and stop there. Search Query Performance is a different, more specific report: instead of "how many people saw my product," it breaks that number down query by query — this exact search term, this many impressions, this share of the clicks, this share of the purchases. It's the most direct answer Amazon gives you to "am I still winning this keyword," and it's free for any Brand Registered seller. Here's where to find it, what each column actually means, and how to read it before a ranking problem shows up as a revenue problem.
Where to find the Search Query Performance report
In Seller Central: Brands → Brand Analytics → Search Analytics → Search Query Performance. Two requirements gate access: Brand Registry enrollment and a Professional selling plan — Individual-plan sellers and anyone not enrolled in Brand Registry can't open the report at all. This is a hard access requirement, not a plan detail that's changed recently, so if you're on Brand Registry and still can't find it, check that the account viewing it has Brand Analytics permissions assigned.
Once inside, you can toggle between two scopes:
- ASIN view — the queries that led to one specific product. This is the most actionable starting point, since it tells you exactly which search terms are and aren't working for the listing you're trying to fix.
- Brand view — every query across your whole catalog aggregated together. Better for a top-down read on where the brand as a whole is leaking, worse for diagnosing a single product.
You can export the report as CSV or Excel, and view it on weekly, monthly, or quarterly windows — weekly is the freshest cut Amazon publishes.
What each column actually measures
The report structure is the same idea repeated four times, once per funnel stage: a total for the query across every seller who showed up for it, and your share of that total.
| Stage | What the total counts | What your share means |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | How many times shoppers saw any product for that search term | How often your product was one of the results shown |
| Clicks | How many of those impressions turned into a click on any product | Your slice of the clicks that query generated |
| Cart adds | How many clicks turned into an add-to-cart on any product | Your slice of the cart adds |
| Purchases | How many cart adds (or direct clicks) turned into a purchase | Your slice of the purchases |
Amazon also surfaces a search query score and search query volume figure alongside the funnel numbers. Volume is how many times shoppers used that exact query in the selected window — a straightforward demand signal you can use to prioritize which rows to look at first. Score rolls your impression, click, cart-add, and purchase share into a single indicator of how well you're performing for that query relative to the rest of the market; it moves with your share numbers rather than being an independent ranking or rank-tracking figure.
How to read the report: where the funnel is actually leaking
The report's real value isn't any single number — it's the gap between two adjacent stages. A query where every share number moves together (say, all around 8-10%) means you're competing normally. A query where the numbers diverge tells you exactly which part of the funnel to fix:
- High impression share, low click share. Shoppers see you at the rate you'd expect, but they're clicking someone else. That's a front-of-listing problem — main image, title, price, or star rating relative to what's ranking above you for that query.
- High click share, low cart-add or purchase share. Shoppers click through to your detail page at a normal rate, then leave without buying. That points to the detail page itself — images past the first, bullets, A+ Content, price relative to what they expected, or a review/Q&A objection nobody's addressed.
- Low impression share on a high-volume query. You're barely showing up for a search term that clearly matters to your category. Either the term isn't well indexed in your listing (title, bullets, backend search terms), or you're being outranked and need to look at why.
- High share across every stage. You're winning this query — a candidate for a Sponsored Products bid, since it's already converting for you.
Query A ("stainless steel water bottle"): impression share 6%, click share 5%, purchase share 5%. Roughly proportional — you're competing normally, nothing urgent here.
Query B ("insulated water bottle 32 oz"): impression share 9%, click share 2%, purchase share 1%. Shoppers see you almost as often as query A, but barely click and almost never buy. That's a front-of-listing gap on a query where you already have visibility — check whether your main image and title actually show "32 oz" and "insulated," since that's likely what shoppers are scanning for.
SQP vs. a rank tracker vs. a CTR benchmark
SQP, a keyword rank tracker, and a CTR benchmark answer three different questions, and it's easy to conflate them because all three touch "how is this keyword doing for me." SQP tells you your share of a query's impressions, clicks, and purchases against the whole market — a first-party number straight from Amazon, but not a page-1 position. A keyword rank tracker tells you the actual position number, which SQP never shows. A CTR benchmark tells you whether the click-through rate you're getting for a query is in line with what similar listings in your category typically see, which is a separate read on the same "high impressions, low clicks" pattern SQP surfaces. Used together, SQP flags which queries deserve attention, a rank tracker tells you where you actually sit for them, and a benchmark tells you whether the CTR you're getting there is normal or a real problem.
The Brand view tops out at 1,000 queries
One practical gotcha: the Brand view covers your whole catalog in a single table, and Amazon caps it. Per Amazon's own Search Query Performance dashboard reference, the number of populated queries "will vary based on your catalog size, with a maximum of 1000 query results." On a large catalog, some queries won't appear in the brand-wide table, so for the products you care about most, open their ASIN view as well. And if you want to compare this month's share numbers against three months ago for a specific query, export and save the file yourself, or use a tool that keeps the results so you can revisit them without re-exporting from Seller Central each time.
A weekly SQP check
- Pull the ASIN view for any listing whose sales dipped or plateaued this week.
- Sort by search query volume so you're looking at the terms that matter most first, not a long tail of one-off searches.
- Scan for divergence between impression share and click share, and between click share and purchase share, using the patterns above.
- Flag the front-of-listing gaps (image, title, price, rating) separately from the detail-page gaps (bullets, A+ Content, reviews) — they need different fixes.
- Note your winners — high-share queries you're already converting on — as PPC bid candidates.
- Re-check next week. A query's share moving the wrong direction two weeks running is worth acting on before it shows up in your sales numbers.
Skip the manual export-and-scan
OptimalCentral's Search Query Audit reads your Search Query Performance export (or pulls one ASIN's data directly if your account is connected) and returns the funnel leaks, proven winners, and rank opportunities already sorted for you, with an AI diagnosis of what to fix first, with a 14-day free trial.
See the Search Query Audit →On a connected Brand-plan account, that diagnosis feeds the same 24×7 optimizing agent that watches your other listings — it flags a query-share drop the week it happens rather than waiting for you to remember to export the report. The agent still asks before it changes anything that costs money; catching the leak early is the free part.
For the layer above SQP — what Amazon's ranking system does with all this signal, and what "visible" actually means once COSMO and Alexa for Shopping are involved — see how Amazon search works. And once you've found a keyword worth chasing here, our keyword research guide covers how to find more terms like it and where to place them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Amazon Search Query Performance report?
Amazon's own report of how shoppers move from a search query to a purchase for your products — impressions, clicks, cart adds, and purchases, plus your brand's share of each step relative to every other seller who showed up for that same query. It lives in Brand Analytics and requires Brand Registry.
Where do I find the Search Query Performance report?
In Seller Central: Brands → Brand Analytics → Search Analytics → Search Query Performance. It requires Brand Registry enrollment and a Professional selling plan; sellers without Brand Registry can't access it.
What does search query score mean?
Amazon's own indicator of how well a keyword is performing for your catalog relative to the rest of the market for that search term, rolling your impression, click, cart-add, and purchase share into one figure. It moves with your share numbers, not with an independent ranking algorithm.
What is the difference between ASIN view and Brand view in SQP?
ASIN view shows the search queries that led to a single product — the most actionable starting point for diagnosing why one listing underperforms. Brand view aggregates every query across your whole catalog — better for a top-down read on where the brand as a whole is leaking.
Is Search Query Performance the same as a keyword rank tracker?
No. SQP shows your share of impressions, clicks, and purchases for a query relative to the total market, not a page-1 position number. It tells you a query is worth more attention, but it doesn't tell you where you rank for it — a rank tracker or a CTR benchmark check answers that part.
How often does Search Query Performance data update?
Brand Analytics reports, including Search Query Performance, are available on weekly, monthly, and quarterly views, with weekly data typically the most current cut Amazon publishes. Check the date range shown in Seller Central for the exact refresh, since Amazon doesn't publish a fixed lag guarantee.