To find competitors’ ranked keywords on Amazon, start by knowing what is not possible. You cannot
enter a competitor’s ASIN into Brand Analytics and get their keywords. That method appears in a great many
guides, including an earlier version of this page, and Amazon’s tools do not work that way.
What Brand Analytics actually gives you is the reverse: you search a term, and it shows the top clicked
ASINs for it. So you can confirm that a competitor wins a term you already suspected. You cannot ask it what
terms a competitor wins.
That distinction changes the whole method. Amazon’s own data is a confirmation tool. Discovery comes
from somewhere else, and there is a free route and a paid one.
What each route can and cannot do
| Route | Discovers new terms? | Cost | What it actually tells you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand Analytics, search-term view | No | Free with Brand Registry | Whether a competitor wins a term you name |
| Search Query Performance | No, and only your own ASINs | Free with Brand Registry | Your own share, term by term |
| Amazon autocomplete | Yes, partially | Free | Terms shoppers actually type |
| Reading competitor listings | Yes | Free | The words they chose to target |
| The ASIN-plus-keyword index check | No | Free | Whether a specific ASIN indexes for a specific term |
| Reverse-ASIN tools | Yes | Paid | An estimated list of terms an ASIN ranks for |
| Your own search term report | Yes | Free | Real terms that produced clicks on your ads |
Read the last row first. Your own search term report costs nothing and reports reality rather than an
estimate. In our experience sellers buy a tool before reading the free data they already own.
How to find competitors’ ranked keywords on Amazon for free
Five steps. It takes about an hour and gets you most of the way.
1. Mine autocomplete properly. Type your seed term, then the seed plus each letter of the alphabet.
“Yoga mat a”, “yoga mat b”, and so on. Tedious. It surfaces the phrases Amazon knows shoppers type, and I’d
do it once per product properly rather than casually.
2. Read the top competitors’ titles and bullets as keyword documents. They chose those words
deliberately. Note every attribute word and ignore the marketing language, which I’d argue is the whole skill here.
3. Read their reviews for vocabulary. Customers describe the product in words the seller did not choose,
and those words are frequently searched. I’d read the three-star reviews first, since they describe rather
than praise.
4. Confirm with the index check. Take a term and a competitor’s ASIN, and search both together in the
Amazon search box. If their product appears, that ASIN indexes for that term. This is the closest thing to
a free reverse lookup, it works one term at a time, and it is genuinely reliable rather than estimated.
5. Confirm demand in Brand Analytics. Search the term and read the top clicked ASINs. If the clicks go
to products like yours, the term is addressable. If they go elsewhere, it is not your opportunity. Our guide
to Amazon Search Frequency Rank covers reading that
report, where rank 1 is the most searched term.
A worked example, start to finish
Because the steps above are easy to agree with and easy to skip.
Say you sell a stainless steel water bottle. Seed term “water bottle”, and autocomplete gives you
“insulated”, “with straw”, “for kids”, “gym”, “1 gallon”. Ten minutes of alphabet mining produces perhaps 40
phrases.
Now read the three top competitors’ titles. They name capacity, insulation hours, lid type, and material.
Four attribute families you may not have listed. Those attribute words are the actual find, not the
marketing adjectives around them.
Their reviews add the words the seller avoided. “Leaks”, “sweats”, “fits cup holder”, “dishwasher”. A
shopper searching “water bottle fits cup holder” has enormous intent and no seller wrote that phrase
deliberately. I’d take that one straight to a campaign.
Confirm with the index check. Search “cup holder water bottle” plus a competitor ASIN. If they appear,
they index for it. If not, the term is unclaimed, which is considerably more interesting.
Qualify in Brand Analytics. Search the term, read the top clicked ASINs. Bottles like yours? Addressable.
Car accessories? Not your opportunity, and I’d drop it without regret.
What you end up with is perhaps 15 qualified terms out of 40 candidates, of which 3 or 4 are genuinely
unclaimed. In our experience that is a good hour’s work, and it beats a tool export of 400 rows nobody
filters.
The Brand Analytics correction, stated plainly
Because this page previously got it wrong and the error is everywhere.
Top Search Terms is searched by term, not by ASIN. You enter a search term and see its frequency rank
along with the ASINs receiving the most clicks and conversions for it.
Search Query Performance shows ASIN-level data for your own brand only. Your impressions, clicks, and
purchases, term by term. It does not expose anybody else’s.
Both require Brand Registry. No registry, no access, and there is no workaround worth using.
So the direction of the query is fixed. Term in, ASINs out. Never ASIN in, terms out. I’d stop looking
for the field described in those other guides, because it does not exist.
What that leaves you with is still useful. If you have a candidate list from autocomplete and competitor
listings, Brand Analytics tells you which candidates have real demand and who currently absorbs it. That is
the qualifying step, and it is the step most sellers skip.
The paid route, and what to expect from it
Reverse-ASIN tools exist and they do work. With caveats worth stating.
They estimate. These tools infer keyword lists and search volumes from scraped result data. The lists
are directionally useful and the volume figures are estimates, not Amazon’s numbers, and I’d treat them
that way permanently rather than provisionally.
They are fast. An hour of manual work compressed into seconds, which for a large catalog is the entire
argument. I’d buy one at 200 ASINs and not at 5.
They over-report. A tool will return hundreds of terms an ASIN “ranks for”, including position 200 for
things nobody searches. The list needs filtering before it means anything, and in our experience that
filtering is where the value actually is.
We name no specific tool and publish no ratings. Pricing and feature sets change constantly, and an
earlier version of this page presented tool comparisons we could not stand behind. Trial two against a
product you know well and see which one describes reality.
What I’d check in a trial: does it find the terms you already know you rank for? If it misses those, its
estimates for terms you do not know are worth nothing.
Turning a competitor list into something useful
The step that decides whether any of this was worth doing.
Filter by whether the term describes your product. A competitor ranking for something you do not sell is
not your opportunity. Obvious, and skipped constantly. I’d do this pass first because it is the fastest.
Filter by whether clicks go to products like yours. From Brand Analytics. This kills perhaps a third of
a naive list, in our experience.
Filter by whether you can afford it. Break-even cost per click is your margin times your conversion
rate. A heavily contested term can be unaffordable regardless of relevance. Our guide to
Amazon bid types and strategies covers the
arithmetic.
Then split what remains into 2 piles. Terms for the listing, and terms for advertising. They are not
the same pile: a term with real volume but weak intent belongs in a test campaign rather than in your title, and in my experience conflating them is how titles get stuffed.
Place listing terms once, in the strongest field. Our guide to
Amazon backend keywords covers the field that exists for
words which will not fit in customer-facing copy, and
how many keywords you can use covers every field limit.
What this method will not tell you
Four honest limits.
Not their conversion rate. You see terms, never performance. A competitor can rank for something that
sells nothing at all, and in our experience plenty do.
Not their advertising. Organic rank and paid targeting are different things, and reverse-ASIN tools mostly
infer the organic side. I’d not conflate the two when planning a budget.
Not why they win. Frequently the answer is review count and sales history rather than keywords, and no
amount of keyword copying closes that gap. This is the limit I’d take most seriously, because copying
the terms of an entrenched competitor is the most common way to waste a quarter.
Not whether you can win. Rank plus incumbent click share tells you that. A term dominated by a brand
with thousands of reviews is a term you can see and a position you cannot take.
If you would rather have the research done and turned into a listing and campaign structure, that sits
inside our
account management service. We have
optimized 10,000+ listings, and we are an Amazon Ads partner and an Amazon SPN Verified Partner.
FAQ
Can you see a competitor’s keywords in Amazon Brand Analytics?
No. Brand Analytics Top Search Terms is searched by term and returns the ASINs receiving the most clicks,
not the reverse. Search Query Performance shows term-level data for your own brand only. There is no field
for entering a competitor’s ASIN, despite many guides describing one.
How do I find competitors’ ranked keywords for free?
Mine Amazon autocomplete with your seed term plus each letter of the alphabet, read competitor titles and
bullets as keyword documents, read their reviews for customer vocabulary, then confirm each candidate by
searching the term together with their ASIN in the Amazon search box.
What is the ASIN plus keyword search check?
Entering a term and an ASIN together in Amazon’s search box. If that product appears, it indexes for that
term; if nothing appears, it does not. It works one term at a time and is the closest free equivalent to a
reverse lookup, and unlike a tool estimate it reflects Amazon’s actual index.
Are reverse-ASIN tools accurate?
They are directionally useful and their volume figures are estimates inferred from scraped data rather than
Amazon’s own numbers. They also over-report, returning terms an ASIN nominally ranks for at position 200,
so the output needs filtering before it means anything.
Should I target the same keywords as my competitors?
Only after filtering for whether the term describes your product, whether Brand Analytics shows clicks
going to products like yours, and whether you can afford the click at your margin. Frequently a competitor
wins on review count and sales history rather than keywords, which copying terms cannot fix.
Do I need Brand Registry to research competitor keywords?
For Amazon’s own data, yes, since both Brand Analytics and Search Query Performance require it. Without
registry, autocomplete mining, reading competitor listings, the ASIN plus keyword index check, and your own
advertising search term report all remain available and cost nothing.
Last updated: August 31, 2026. Brand Analytics report names, available views, and eligibility change over
time; Seller Central carries the current version for your account. An earlier version of this page
described entering a competitor’s ASIN into Brand Analytics Top Search Terms to retrieve their keywords.
That is not how the report works and the instruction has been corrected. Tool comparison tables that we
could not substantiate have also been removed.
