SQP tells you what **the whole market** searched for. Your Search Terms report tells you what **your ads** actually ran on. They are two views of the same shopper behaviour, and the gap between them is where most missed opportunity lives.

The **SQP & Search Terms** tab puts them side by side so you do not have to reconcile two reports by hand.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-sqp-search-terms-explainer-25e34230.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? A hundred and one seconds on the demand you never reached, and why it cannot appear in your ad reports.*

## **Where it lives**

**Search Query Performance → SQP Analysis.**

![The two tabs on the analysis table](/kb-assets/shot-sqp-analysis-e8238b.png)

Two tabs sit above the table:

**SQP & Search Terms** — market demand matched against the customer searches your ads were actually served on.

[**SQP & Keywords**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/sqp-and-keywords-finding-unbid-queries) — market demand matched against the keywords you bid on. See [**SQP & Keywords: Finding Queries You Convert On But Don't Bid On**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/sqp-and-keywords-finding-unbid-queries).

The difference matters more than it sounds. A **keyword** is what you chose to bid on. A **search term** is what a customer actually typed. Broad and auto matching means the two are frequently not the same phrase at all.

## **The four situations**

Matching demand against what you ran produces four cases, and each has a different action:

| Market demand | You ran on it | Meaning | Do |
|---|---|---|---|
| high | yes, converting | working | **scale** — bid and rank |
| high | yes, not converting | you are present and losing | **fix** — listing or page |
| **high** | **no** | **demand you never reached** | **add it** |
| low | yes, spending | you are paying for a thin query | **cut it** |

**The third row is why this tab exists.** A high-volume query where you have no presence at all will never appear in your Search Terms report — because your ads never ran on it, there is nothing to report. It is invisible in advertising reporting by construction, and visible here.

## **The gap worth hunting**

Work in this order:

**1. Sort by search volume.** Start where the demand is.

**2. Find rows with volume and no click share.** The market searches this; you are not being clicked. Either you are not shown, or you are shown and ignored.

**3. Check whether you are shown at all.** Impression share separates the two:

- **No impression share** — you are absent. This is a targeting gap: add the term.
- **Impression share, no clicks** — you are shown and passed over. This is a listing problem, and adding keywords will not fix it. See [**Search Query Cart Analysis: Why a Query Doesn't Convert**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-query-cart-analysis).

That distinction determines whether you spend money or spend effort, and getting it backwards is the common mistake.

## **The other direction — what you ran that nobody wanted**

The same tab exposes the reverse case: terms your ads served on that carry very little market demand.

Broad and auto matching drifts. Some of that drift is discovery and worth keeping; some of it is spend on phrases almost nobody searches. Sort by your spend against market volume, and the thin-demand, real-spend rows are negative-match candidates.

This overlaps with the aggregated Search Terms view in Amazon Ads, which is the better screen for the spend side. See [**Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-terms-and-aggregated-search-terms).

## **Read the classification chips**

The **Generic / Branded / Competitor** chips above the table filter the population, and they change what a gap means:

**A generic query you are absent from** is a genuine growth opportunity.

**A branded query you are absent from** is unusual and worth checking — it is your own name.

**A competitor query you are absent from** is often a deliberate choice, and expensive to change. Note that competitor-brand queries are deliberately excluded from Fix listing and Add-keyword recommendations, because a better page cannot win a shopper who wants somebody else's brand. See [**Generic, Branded and Competitor Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/generic-branded-and-competitor-terms).

## **Turning findings into keywords**

A gap you decide to close becomes an exact-match keyword, in a campaign where you can see it, at a bid informed by what the query already costs the market.

Then negative-match it in whichever broad or auto campaign might otherwise pick it up, so you are not bidding against yourself. The full routine is in [**Harvest Winning Search Terms into Exact-Match Campaigns**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/harvest-winning-search-terms).

## **What not to conclude**

**Absence is not always a mistake.** Some high-volume queries are wrong for your product, and the right answer is to stay out.

**Market volume is not your opportunity.** You will win a share of it, not all of it. Estimate with your existing share on similar terms.

**Weekly cohorts.** SQP reports whole weeks; your Search Terms report is daily. Compare like with like. See [**SQP Is Weekly: Reading Week Cohorts Correctly**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/sqp-is-weekly-reading-week-cohorts).

**SQP is not real-time.** It lags, so a term you added this week will not appear here immediately.

## **Related**

- [**SQP & Keywords: Finding Queries You Convert On But Don't Bid On**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/sqp-and-keywords-finding-unbid-queries) — the sibling tab.
- [**Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-terms-and-aggregated-search-terms) — the advertising-side report.
- [**Generic, Branded and Competitor Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/generic-branded-and-competitor-terms) — the chips that filter the table.
- [**Harvest Winning Search Terms into Exact-Match Campaigns**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/harvest-winning-search-terms) — acting on the gap.