Amazon Search Query Performance (SQP): Diagnose Listings and PPC

Two ASINs get the same number of impressions. One outsells the other three to one. The reason is almost never a mystery once you read the right report, and most sellers never open it. Amazon’s Search Query Performance (SQP) report shows you exactly where a keyword’s shoppers drop off: impressions, clicks, cart adds, and purchases, plus your share of each against the whole market. That funnel tells you whether your problem is a listing problem or a PPC problem. Here is how to read SQP and act on it.

Table of Contents

• What the SQP Report Shows
• Impression, Click, and Purchase Share
• The Three-Way Diagnosis
• Listing Problem or PPC Problem?
• A Practical SQP Workflow
• FAQs

What the Search Query Performance Report Shows

SQP lives in Brand Analytics in Seller Central, so it requires Brand Registry. For each search query shoppers used to find your products, it lays out the full funnel: how many times the query showed your product (impressions), how many clicks it earned, how many cart adds, and how many purchases. You can view it at brand level to see the queries driving your whole catalog, or at ASIN level to diagnose a single product. Time views (weekly, monthly, quarterly) let you spot trends rather than react to noise.

The power of SQP is that it separates a single keyword into stages. Total sales tell you the outcome; SQP tells you where in the journey shoppers left, which is the information you actually need to fix anything.

Impression, Click, and Purchase Share

Alongside the raw counts, SQP shows your brand’s share of each stage against the entire market for that query. This is the part that turns data into strategy:

• Impression share: of all impressions for this query, how many were yours. Low share means you are barely showing up.
• Click share: of all clicks for this query, how many came to you. This reflects how compelling your listing looks in the results.
• Cart add and purchase share: of all purchases for this query, how many were yours. This reflects how well your detail page and offer convert.

Comparing your share at each stage is what reveals the leak. A high impression share that collapses to a low click share is a very different problem from a healthy click share that collapses at purchase.

The Three-Way Diagnosis

Read the funnel from the top and stop at the first stage where your share falls off:

• Low impression share (visibility problem): shoppers are searching this query, but you are not showing up enough. Causes: the keyword is not in your listing, your organic rank is weak, or your ads are not covering it. Fix with keyword placement, rank-building, and ad coverage. See keyword optimization.
• Healthy impression share, low click share (click problem): you show up but shoppers click a competitor. The click decision is driven by what is visible in search: main image, title, price, star rating, and badges. Fix the main image and title first, they do the heavy lifting. See image optimization and title optimization.
• Healthy click share, low purchase share (conversion problem): shoppers click but do not buy. The problem is on the detail page: bullets, A+ Content, price, reviews, or the offer itself. Fix conversion, not visibility. See our listing optimization guide.

Listing Problem or PPC Problem?

This is the question SQP answers better than any other report, and it is the core of treating listing and PPC as one system:

• If the leak is at impressions, it is partly a PPC and rank question: are you bidding on and ranking for the query?
• If the leak is at clicks, no bid increase will save you. A higher bid buys more impressions of a listing shoppers already choose not to click. Fix the image, title, price, and rating.
• If the leak is at purchase, both more impressions and more clicks just waste money. Fix the detail page and offer before spending another dollar on ads.

The common, expensive mistake is throwing PPC budget at what is actually a click or conversion problem. SQP stops you from doing that. See our guide to wasted ad spend for the ad side of the same idea.

A Practical SQP Workflow

• Pull SQP at ASIN level for a product that is underperforming despite traffic.
• Find the top queries by impressions or purchases and read each funnel top-down.
• Identify the first stage where your share drops relative to the stage above it.
• Match the fix to the stage: visibility (keywords, rank, ads), click (image, title, price, rating), or conversion (bullets, A+, price, reviews).
• Make one change, then re-read after enough data so you know what moved the needle.

How AMZ Scaler Uses SQP

SQP is central to how we decide where to spend effort, because it tells us whether a struggling ASIN needs a listing fix or a bid fix before we touch anything. That diagnosis-first approach is the heart of our listing optimization and PPC management services. If you have traffic but uneven conversion, an SQP read is usually the fastest way to find out why.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Amazon Search Query Performance report?

SQP is a Brand Analytics report (Brand Registry required) that shows, for each search query, the funnel from impressions to clicks to cart adds to purchases, plus your brand’s share of each stage against the whole market. It reveals where shoppers drop off for a given keyword, so you can diagnose the real problem.

How do I use SQP to improve my listing?

Read the funnel top-down. If your click share is low despite good impression share, fix the main image, title, price, and rating. If your purchase share is low despite good click share, fix the detail page: bullets, A+ Content, price, and reviews. Fix the first stage that leaks, then re-check.

Does SQP tell me whether to fix my listing or my ads?

Yes, that is its greatest strength. A leak at impressions points to visibility (keywords, rank, ads). A leak at clicks points to the listing’s search appearance (image, title, price). A leak at purchase points to the detail page and offer. It stops you spending ad budget on what is actually a conversion problem.

Do I need Brand Registry to access SQP?

Yes. Search Query Performance is part of Brand Analytics, which is available to Brand Registered sellers in Seller Central. If you are not yet brand registered, enrolling unlocks SQP along with other Brand Analytics reports that help you diagnose search and conversion performance.