Every click in Amazon Sponsored Products comes from a real customer search. The search term report shows those searches, what they cost and whether they led to sales. Working through it regularly does two things: it finds new keywords that convert, and it stops money draining away on searches that never will.
Where to find the data
In the Amazon Ads console, download the Sponsored Products search term report for a recent period. It lists each customer search term, the keyword or targeting that triggered it, impressions, clicks, spend, orders and sales. Look at enough time to have meaningful clicks; a week is often too short for slower-selling products.
Harvesting: moving winners into exact match
Search terms that generate sales in automatic, broad or phrase campaigns are candidates for their own exact-match targeting.
- Filter for converting terms. Sort by orders, then check ACoS against your target.
- Add them as exact keywords in a dedicated exact-match campaign or ad group, with a bid based on their performance.
- Add them as negative exact in the campaign they came from, so the discovery campaign stops competing with the exact campaign for the same search.
This isolates proven terms where you control the bid, and keeps discovery campaigns doing discovery.
Negatives: stopping wasted spend
Some searches attract clicks but never sell: wrong product type, wrong size, a competitor’s brand you cannot beat, or simply browsers. Adding negatives prevents your ads showing for them.
- Negative exact blocks one specific search term. Use it for precise terms you never want.
- Negative phrase blocks every search containing a phrase. Use it for clearly irrelevant words, such as “free”, a wrong material or a product type you do not sell.
How many clicks before you negate?
There is no universal number. A practical rule is to compare clicks without a sale to your typical conversion rate: if your product usually converts at around 10%, a search term with 20 or 30 clicks and no orders is unlikely to be bad luck. For expensive, slow-selling products, give terms more time; for cheap, fast-selling ones, less.
Be careful with broad negatives
A negative phrase like “kids” might block “kids water bottle” when you only sell adult bottles, which is good, but also “bottle for kids sports team” if you sell team packs. Check what a negative will block before adding it.
Product targeting works the same way
The search term report also shows product pages (ASINs) where your ads appeared through product targeting or automatic campaigns. Move ASINs that convert into a dedicated product-targeting campaign, and negate ASINs that consistently waste spend.
A routine that works
- Weekly: check spend on new search terms with clicks and no sales; add obvious negatives.
- Every two weeks: harvest converting terms into exact match and add matching negatives to their source campaigns.
- Monthly: review bids on exact keywords against target ACoS, and check TACoS for the whole account.
Keep a simple log of changes, so you can see what you did when performance moves. If you are new to the metrics, start with our guide to Amazon PPC structure, ACoS and TACoS.
Mistakes we often find in audits
- Converting terms that were never moved into exact match.
- Exact campaigns competing with the auto campaigns they came from, because no negatives were added.
- Negatives added once and never reviewed, blocking searches that now convert.
- Branded searches mixed in with everything else, making the account look more efficient than it is.
Search term management is a core part of our Amazon PPC service. We audit the account, restructure campaigns where needed and run this routine for you.
