We used to build our Amazon PPC strategy entirely on the Search Term Report: rai
By Michael Erickson Facchin · May 28, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
We used to build our Amazon PPC strategy entirely on the Search Term Report: raising bids on keywords that worked and lowering them on those that didn't. It seemed logical, but it turned out to be a mistake.
Sales for one of our top products started to drop. Meanwhile, standard ad metrics like ACoS and ROAS looked great. The reports showed no red flags.
We only figured out the problem when we put aside the standard reports and started analyzing data through the Search Query Performance (SQP) dashboard.
How SQP exposed the leak in our funnel: If you look at the dashboard layout, the real story is in the drop-off between the funnel stages. We compared our Brand Share under Search Funnel - Clicks to our Brand Share under Search Funnel - Cart Adds.
For our main keyword, the dashboard showed us exactly where we were losing customers:
• Our Brand Share for Clicks was incredibly high. We were capturing a massive chunk of the traffic.
• But our Brand Share for Cart Adds plummeted right after.
People were clicking on our ads, viewing our listing, and then leaving to buy from competitors.
The standard Search Term Report didn't show this drop-off, it just showed that we were getting cheap clicks. In reality, we were wasting our budget sending traffic to a listing that wasn't converting. The issue wasn't the ad settings; it was the listing itself.
How we fixed it: Instead of tweaking our PPC bids, we improved the listing. We updated our secondary images to clearly answer a common customer question we found in the reviews.
Within a week, our Cart Adds Brand Share tripled. Total sales increased right after. If you base your PPC decisions solely on ad reports, you aren't seeing the funnel drop-offs and you are wasting money. You need to look for weak spots between your clicks and your cart additions.
Are you already tracking your Brand Share drop-offs through the SQP dashboard, or are you still relying only on Search Term Reports? Let me know in the comments.