How to find Amazon competitor keywords: seven methods, and what each one really shows
To find Amazon competitor keywords, you combine what competitors show in their listings with what Amazon's data and your own ads reveal about the searches that reach them. This guide covers seven methods, what each can prove, and how to turn the list into a better listing.
Key takeaways
- Amazon's own blog says you cannot see a competitor's keywords directly. Every method shows the searches around a product, not the product's hidden fields.
- The Top Search Terms dashboard lets brand owners look up a product and see which top terms send customers to it, including a competitor's.
- Sponsored Products auto campaigns and product targeting reveal real converting search terms, and even competitor ASINs, in your search term report.
- Reverse ASIN tools such as Helium 10 Cerebro give estimates from outside Amazon. Useful for ideas, never proof.
- Competitor brand names are prohibited in your search terms. Use what you learn for relevance, not to borrow their name.
Can you find Amazon competitor keywords?
When sellers try to find Amazon competitor keywords, they usually want one of two things: the words a rival product ranks for, or the words a rival put in its listing. Amazon's own seller blog is direct about the limit. In its FAQ it says you cannot find competitor keywords, and points instead to tools that show search patterns in a niche.
That sounds like a dead end, but it is not. A competitor's visible listing is public. Amazon's Brand Analytics shows which top search terms send customers to a product. Your own Sponsored Products reports show real searches, and even the competitor pages your ads appeared on. And third party tools estimate the rest.
What stays hidden is the competitor's backend search terms field, their full keyword list and their sales by search term. Any tool claiming to show "every keyword a competitor ranks for" is modeling it from outside Amazon. That is useful, as long as it is treated as an estimate.
This guide works through seven methods, from free to paid, marks where each one's data comes from, and ends with how to put the result to work in a listing. The wider process is in our Amazon SEO guide.
Seven ways to find competitor keywords on Amazon
| Method | What it reveals | Whose data | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Read the competitor listing | The words they chose for title, bullets and description | Public listing | Free, anyone |
| 2. Amazon search bar suggestions | Real phrases shoppers type around the product | Amazon | Free, anyone |
| 3. Top Search Terms by product | Top terms that send customers to a competitor's ASIN | Amazon Brand Analytics | Brand Registry |
| 4. Search Query Performance, Query Detail | The top 10 ASINs for a query you share with competitors | Amazon Brand Analytics | Brand Registry |
| 5. Product Opportunity Explorer | Search terms and volume trends in a niche | Amazon | Seller Central |
| 6. Sponsored Products reports | Converting searches, and competitor ASINs your ads showed on | Your own ad data | Advertisers |
| 7. Reverse ASIN lookup tools | An estimated keyword list for any ASIN | Third party estimates | Paid tools |
Use them in combination. Methods one and two are free and fast but tell you nothing about volume. Methods three to five are Amazon's own data and the most reliable, but need Brand Registry or Seller Central. Method six shows what converts for you. Method seven fills gaps with numbers you then check against the others.
The rest of this guide takes each method in turn, with what to look for and where each one misleads.
Method 1: read the competitor's listing like a keyword list
Amazon's keyword research blog starts here: review the titles, bullet points and descriptions of best selling products like yours. It is the simplest competitor analysis there is, and it shows exactly which words a competitor decided were worth the space. Look at the top five to ten products for your main search term, organic and sponsored.
Read for patterns, not for single words. When the same term appears in most of the top titles, the market has agreed it matters. When one competitor uses a phrase the others miss, it may be an opening or a mistake, and the other methods tell you which.
| Part of the listing | What it tells you about their keywords |
|---|---|
| Title | The primary keyword they target, and the attribute they lead with |
| Item highlights | The secondary details they rated second most important |
| Bullet points | Features and uses, often long tail keywords in plain sight |
| Description and A+ Content | How they explain the product, and the words buyers respond to |
| Customer reviews and questions | The words buyers use, which may differ from the seller's |
| Backend search terms | Hidden; no method shows another seller's field |
Reviews deserve a separate pass. Amazon's blog suggests reading customer reviews and questions for the words that attracted buyers. Customers often name a product differently from the brand, and those names are search terms. A review that says "fits my car cup holder" is a use case worth a keyword.
Method 2: the Amazon search bar
Type the product's main term into the Amazon search bar and watch the suggestions. Amazon's blog says these autocomplete suggestions are based on what customers often search for, which makes them one of the few free sources of real shopper phrasing. Add a letter after the term, a to z, to surface longer phrases.
The search bar does not show a competitor's keywords as such, but it shows the phrases competitors are competing on. Pair each suggestion with a look at who ranks for it: if the same rival appears for many of them, those phrases are part of its keyword strategy, whether it planned them or not.
Methods 3 to 5: Amazon's own data on competitors
The most reliable way to find Amazon competitor keywords is inside Amazon's own dashboards, because they are built on real searches rather than estimates. Brand Analytics is available to brand representatives enrolled in Brand Registry, and it includes the two dashboards that come closest to a competitor keyword view.
Top Search Terms: look up a competitor's product
The Top Search Terms dashboard lists the most popular search terms for a period, with the top three products customers clicked after each search. Amazon's blog adds the part most sellers miss: you can search for a specific product to see which terms are driving customers to it. Enter a competitor's ASIN and you see the top terms where it wins clicks.
Search Query Performance: the Query Detail view
Search Query Performance shows the queries associated with your own brand. Its Query Detail view then compares your ASIN with the top 10 ASINs for a chosen query, scored on impressions, clicks, cart adds and purchases. It shows which competitors win a search you both appear for.
Product Opportunity Explorer
Product Opportunity Explorer, in Seller Central, shows top search terms and trends in search volume across a niche. It does not name one competitor's keywords, but it maps the searches every product in the niche competes for, which is the list your competitor research should cover.
Limit: only top terms
Top Search Terms covers the most popular searches, so a competitor's long tail keywords will not show there.
Limit: top three clicks
A product appears for a term only when it is among the three most clicked after that search.
Limit: your queries first
Search Query Performance starts from queries tied to your brand, so it shows rivals where you already compete.
Strength: real data
All three are built on Amazon's own search records, not on outside estimates.
Method 6: let Sponsored Products find them for you
Your own advertising data answers a question no other method can: which searches actually convert for your product. Amazon Ads describes automatic targeting as a source of keyword discovery, matching your ad to searches and products similar to yours through four strategies: close match, loose match, substitutes and complements.
The search term report then shows the customer search terms that produced at least one click on your ads, with sales and purchase rate for each. Amazon keeps 65 days of it. It is the most direct way to see which of the terms your competitors fight over also work for you.
It also shows competitors by name. Amazon's help page explains that entries such as "b00ipgvvz4" in the customer search term column are ASINs: the product detail pages where your ad appeared. They show up for automatic campaigns and product targeting ad groups, so the report lists competitor products whose shoppers clicked your ad.
| Amazon Ads report or feature | What it shows about competitors | Detail from Amazon's help |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic targeting, substitutes | Searches and products where yours is shown as an alternative | One of four automatic strategies |
| Manual product targeting | Performance of your ad on a chosen competitor's ASIN | Target specific products, or block them |
| Search term report | Real searches and competitor ASINs that led to clicks | At least 1 click; 65 day lookback |
| Search term impression share | Your rank against all other advertisers on each search term | 30 day share view; 90 day lookback |
The impression share report adds the competitive view: for each search term, your share of Sponsored Products impressions and your rank against every other advertiser. Rank five means four advertisers won more impressions on that term. Running this well is the core of our Amazon PPC management work.
Method 7: reverse ASIN lookup tools
A reverse ASIN lookup takes a competitor's ASIN and returns a list of keywords the tool believes the product ranks for, usually with estimated search volume and rank positions. Amazon's own keyword research blog names two: Helium 10's Cerebro, which shows which keywords top competitors use, and Jungle Scout's Keyword Scout.
These tools are the fastest way to a long list, and the most tempting to over trust. They are built outside Amazon, so their keyword lists and volume numbers are modeled estimates, not Amazon's search records.
Use reverse ASIN data for
- Ideas: long tail phrases you had not thought of
- Comparing several competitors to find shared terms
- Spotting terms where a rival ranks low, so the field is open
- A first list to test in Sponsored Products
- Tracking whether a rival's visible terms change over time
Do not treat it as
- Amazon's data: it is a third party estimate
- A view of the competitor's backend search terms
- An exact search volume to plan a budget on
- Proof a term converts: only your own sales show that
- A list to copy whole: relevance to your product comes first
A workflow to find Amazon competitor keywords
- Search your main term and list the top five to ten competitor ASINs, organic and sponsored.
- Read each listing and note repeated terms in titles, highlights and bullets.
- Collect search bar suggestions for the main term and its variations.
- If you have Brand Registry, look up each competitor ASIN in Top Search Terms.
- Check Search Query Performance Query Detail for queries you share with them.
- Run a reverse ASIN tool on the same ASINs to widen the list, marked as estimates.
- Test the candidates in a Sponsored Products campaign, auto and manual.
- After two to four weeks, keep the terms your search term report shows converting.
- Place the winners in the title, bullets or search terms, each in one place.
The test step is what separates research from guessing. A keyword that works for a competitor may not work for your product, price or reviews. Paying for a few clicks on it costs less than rewriting a listing around a term that never converts.
Placing the terms is the job covered in our Amazon listing optimization guide, and the hidden field in our guide to Amazon backend keywords.
What you cannot do with competitor keywords
Finding a competitor's keywords is allowed. Some ways of using them are not. Amazon's search terms page lists your brand or other brand names among prohibited search terms, and says violations can get an ASIN suppressed and put account health at risk. Amazon's search glossary calls other brand names in an ASIN's catalog data catalog spam.
So a competitor's brand name never goes in your title, bullets or backend terms, however much traffic it gets. The generic words around it, the product type, the use, the feature, are fair game. Amazon's title rules add that titles must not contain subjective claims such as "best seller", which rules out borrowing a rival's badge language too.
| What you found | Where it can go | Where it cannot |
|---|---|---|
| Generic product terms | Title, bullets, search terms | No limit, as long as it is accurate |
| Use cases and features | Bullets, item highlights, search terms | Anywhere it would be untrue of your product |
| A competitor's brand name | Nowhere in your listing | Title, bullets, description, search terms |
| A competitor's ASIN | Sponsored Products product targeting | Anywhere in your catalog data |
Mistakes when researching competitor keywords
Trusting one tool's numbers
Reverse ASIN volumes are estimates; check the important ones against Amazon's own dashboards.
Copying a competitor's keyword list
Their list fits their product. Keep only terms that describe yours accurately.
Using their brand name
Prohibited in search terms and treated as catalog spam in listing data.
Ignoring your own ad data
Your search term report shows what converts for you, which no competitor tool can.
Only studying the top seller
The leader wins on reviews and history. Rivals your size show terms you can realistically win.
Researching once
Competitors change listings and new ones arrive. Repeat the research every few months.
If you would rather hand the research over, our Amazon SEO and listing optimization service starts with a free audit that includes a competitor keyword review for one product.
Finding Amazon competitor keywords: FAQ
Can I see exactly which keywords a competitor ranks for on Amazon?
Not from Amazon directly. Amazon's seller blog says you cannot find competitor keywords, and no tool can read another seller's backend search terms. Brand Analytics shows the top terms that send customers to a product, and reverse ASIN tools estimate the rest.
What is a reverse ASIN lookup?
A reverse ASIN lookup is a third party tool that takes a product's ASIN and returns the keywords it estimates the product ranks for, often with estimated search volume. Helium 10's Cerebro is one example Amazon's own blog mentions.
Are reverse ASIN tools accurate?
They are estimates built from outside Amazon, so treat them as a source of ideas. Check important terms against Amazon's own Top Search Terms or Search Query Performance data, and test them in Sponsored Products before rewriting a listing around them.
How do I find competitor keywords for free?
Read the top competitor listings for your main term, note repeated words in titles and bullets, collect Amazon search bar suggestions, and read customer reviews and questions for the words buyers use. None of these show volume, but all are real.
How does Top Search Terms show competitor keywords?
Brand owners in Brand Registry can search the Top Search Terms dashboard for a specific product, including a competitor's, to see which top search terms send customers to it. It only covers popular terms where the product is among the three most clicked.
Can my search term report show competitor ASINs?
Yes. Amazon Ads says alphanumeric entries in the customer search term column are ASINs, meaning the product pages where your ad appeared. They show for automatic campaigns and product targeting ad groups.
Can I use a competitor's brand name as a keyword?
Not in your listing. Amazon lists other brand names among prohibited search terms and treats them as catalog spam in listing data. Targeting a competitor's products through Sponsored Products product targeting is a separate, allowed advertising feature.
How many competitors should I research?
Five to ten is a practical range: the top results for your main term, both organic and sponsored, plus a few rivals closer to your own size, since their terms are often the ones you can realistically win.
How often should I redo competitor keyword research?
Every few months, and whenever the results page changes: a new competitor, a rival's listing rewrite, or a new converting term in your search term report. Amazon's blog also advises watching trends and seasonality in your niche.
What should I do with the competitor keywords I find?
Filter for terms that are true of your product, test the promising ones in Sponsored Products, then place the converting terms in your title, bullets or backend search terms, each in one place.
Sources
- Improve product visibility through effective Amazon keyword research, Sell on Amazon blogLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Amazon SEO: 7 ways to improve your product's search rankings, Sell on Amazon blogLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Search Query Performance dashboard, Seller Central helpLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Use search terms effectively, Seller Central helpLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Amazon search glossary, Seller Central helpLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Search term report for Sponsored Products, Amazon Ads helpLast verified September 24, 2026.
- Search Term Impression Share report for Sponsored Products, Amazon Ads helpLast verified September 24, 2026.
- A guide to targeting with Sponsored Products, Amazon AdsLast verified September 24, 2026.
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