How to Use Amazon Search Query Performance to Find the Keywords You're Missing
The keyword had roughly 96,000 searches in a single month.
Shoppers bought from it 5,891 times.
The brand, whose product matched the search almost exactly, earned 593 impressions and zero purchases.
That gap did not appear in the brand's campaign reports. Campaign data only shows the keywords an account already advertises on, and how they perform. It says nothing about the demand the account never reaches. The gap only became visible in Amazon's Search Query Performance report, which compares a brand's results to the entire market for each search term.
For brand-registered sellers, it is one of the most useful and least used sources of keyword data available.
What the Report Shows
Search Query Performance sits within Brand Analytics in Seller Central. It can be viewed at the brand level or for an individual ASIN, by week, month, or quarter.
For each search query that led shoppers to the brand's products, it reports the full funnel for the market as a whole and for the brand's own products, side by side:
The value lies in the shares. Campaign reports show what an account achieved. Search Query Performance shows what was available.
Reading the Shares
Consider a niche search term in one account's monthly data. The term generated 758 impressions across all products. The brand's ASIN received 32 of them, a 4.2% impression share. The term produced three purchases in total, and two of them went to the brand.
Impression share
32 ÷ 758 = 4.2%
Purchase share
2 ÷ 3 = 67%
A low impression share combined with a high purchase share is a strong signal. When shoppers see the product for this term, they choose it. The product is under-exposed, not under-performing. More visibility on that term is likely to produce more sales.
In general, purchase share should be greater than impression share. When it is, the product converts better than the average competitor for that search. When it is lower, shoppers see the product but buy something else, which points to price, reviews, images, or relevance rather than visibility.
Finding the Gaps
The most valuable output of the report is a short list of terms that meet three conditions.
High search volume. The term has enough demand to matter. Sort by search query volume, largest first.
High relevance. The term describes the product closely. The search query score helps here, since it ranks how important each term is to the ASIN or brand. Judgment matters too: a term can carry volume without describing the product.
Low share. The brand's impression and purchase shares are near zero, despite the term being relevant.
The keyword described at the start met all three. It had roughly 96,000 monthly searches, closely matched the product, and produced thousands of purchases in the market. The brand's 593 impressions suggested it was reaching the term only incidentally, most likely through an auto campaign rather than a deliberate target. Targeting the term directly in exact match would likely have produced far more impressions and some share of those purchases.
Turning a Gap Into a Campaign
A promising term from the report is a starting point, not a decision. Before launching, three checks avoid wasted spend.
- Check organic rank. If the product already ranks in the top few organic positions for the term, aggressive advertising is unnecessary. A lower bid on rest-of-search or product-page placements protects the position. If the product ranks on page one but not near the top, the term may be a strong ranking candidate.
- Check whether it is already targeted for this product. A term may already be targeted somewhere in the account for a different ASIN, or targeted in broad or phrase match only. What matters is whether the specific product has an exact match target on it.
- Check what the share pattern implies. A high-volume term with low impression share needs visibility. A term with healthy impression share but poor purchase share needs a better listing or offer, and more advertising will mostly buy more clicks that do not convert.
A search term report can add one more cross-check. It shows each term's impression share for the account's own campaigns, though only over a limited recent window. Comparing it with Search Query Performance confirms whether a gap comes from not targeting a term or from losing the auction on it.
Using Historical Periods for Seasonal Planning
Because Search Query Performance can be pulled for past periods, it is particularly useful ahead of seasonal peaks. Pulling the same weeks or months from the previous year shows which terms drove purchases during that period, how large the market was, and how much of it the brand captured.
That list is a stronger foundation for seasonal campaigns than generic event keywords. It reflects what shoppers actually searched and bought, not what a seller assumes they will search.
Pulling many periods or many ASINs through the Seller Central interface is slow. Some third-party browser tools can export multiple periods at once. Test any such tool carefully and confirm it does not interfere with other Seller Central pages while active.
Prioritizing When the List Is Long
A large catalog can produce hundreds of candidate terms. Prioritize in this order:
- Relevant terms with high volume and near-zero share, on the brand's best-selling and best-stocked products
- Terms where purchase share already exceeds impression share, since the product has proven it wins when seen
- Terms where the product ranks on page one but not at the top, which combine an advertising opportunity with a ranking opportunity
- Everything else, tested at modest bids before any increase
The Takeaway
Campaign reports show how well an account performs on the keywords it chose. Search Query Performance shows which keywords it should have chosen.
Read the shares, not just the totals. Look for relevant, high-volume terms where the brand's impression share is near zero, and for terms where purchase share outpaces impression share. Check organic rank and existing targets before launching, and treat a term with poor purchase share as a listing problem before treating it as an advertising opportunity.
At Extension eCom, we review Search Query Performance alongside campaign data and organic rank, because the most valuable keyword in an account is often one it has never targeted.
If your keyword research starts and ends with the terms you already advertise on, there is likely demand you are not reaching. Extension eCom can review your Search Query Performance data and identify the gaps worth targeting first.
