Amazon's search demand is not static. New phrases appear every week — a trend, a competitor's campaign, a seasonal shift, a product nobody was searching for a month ago.
TrackIQ counts them for you, on a tile most people read as a total and never look at again.
Prefer to watch? Eighty-seven seconds on a tile most people read as a total, and the ten-minute weekly routine behind it.
The number is already on the screen
Search Query Performance → Keywords Tracked.
The tile shows the total, and beneath it a green figure with the definition attached:
new = first seen in the latest week
That is the whole feature. A count of queries that were not in your data last week and are now, refreshed every week, sitting on the dashboard you already open.
It appears on both Account and Products, so you can ask the question for the brand or for one ASIN. See Account vs Products: Two Ways to Read SQP.
Why new queries matter more than they look
A new query is demand that did not exist for you last week. Three things follow:
You are almost certainly not bidding on it. New queries arrive through broad, phrase and auto matching, at broad-match prices, if they arrive at all.
Nobody has optimised for it yet. Competition on a genuinely new phrase is thinner than on an established one, which is the cheapest position you will ever get.
It tells you something about the market. A cluster of new phrases around one attribute is a shift in how people are shopping your category.
The weekly routine
Ten minutes, once a week:
1. Read the new count. Both tabs. A number well above its usual level is worth investigating on its own — something changed.
2. Find the new queries. Sort the SQP Analysis table by week and look at the most recent cohort. Queries with data in the latest week and nothing before it are your new arrivals.
3. Sort them into three piles.
| Pile | What it is | Do |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant, converting | real new demand you are already winning | harvest it |
| Relevant, not converting yet | too new to judge | watch a week |
| Irrelevant | broad match drifting | negative-match it |
4. Act on the first and third piles. The middle one keeps.
Harvesting a new query
A new query that converted is the best harvest candidate there is — proven, and probably cheap.
Move it to an exact-match keyword, in a campaign where you can see it, and negative-match it in the campaign it came from so you are not bidding against yourself. That last step is the one people skip. See Harvest Winning Search Terms into Exact-Match Campaigns.
Do not harvest on one order. A new query with a single sale is a coincidence until it repeats.
Reading the count itself
The trend in the number tells you something the individual queries do not:
| Pattern | Reading |
|---|---|
| Steady low number each week | normal churn |
| Sudden spike | a trend, a season, or your match types widened |
| Persistent high number | your broad/auto campaigns are casting very wide |
| Near zero, consistently | you have tight targeting — efficient, but you will miss shifts |
A spike is not automatically good. If a bid change or a match-type change widened your net, the new queries are your own doing rather than the market's, and many will be irrelevant. Check what you changed before concluding the category moved.
Consistently near-zero is a strategic choice, and it has a cost. Exact-match-only accounts are efficient and blind: they cannot discover the phrase that becomes next year's main term.
Where else new demand shows up
Recommended Actions → Add as keyword flags queries you have impressions and clicks on but no keyword bidding, which overlaps with this population and comes pre-sorted by money. See Recommended Actions: The Queries That Need a Decision.
Brand Keywords in AMC shows new branded searches your advertising caused — a different and complementary signal. See Brand Keywords: Proving Upper-Funnel Spend Works.
What not to conclude
New to you, not new to Amazon. "First seen in the latest week" means first seen in your data. The phrase may be long-established in the category and simply new to your ads.
A new query is not free traffic. It arrived through a match type you are paying for.
Weekly cohorts. SQP reports whole weeks, so "the latest week" is a complete week, not the last seven days. See SQP Is Weekly: Reading Week Cohorts Correctly.
Volume takes time. A new query with a handful of impressions cannot be judged for a fortnight.
Related
- Understanding Search Query Performance — the dashboard overall.
- Harvest Winning Search Terms into Exact-Match Campaigns — what to do with the good ones.
- Recommended Actions: The Queries That Need a Decision — the same population, money-sorted.
- Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms — the advertising-side view of the same searches.