Amazon negative keywords: use the search term report to cut wasted spend every week

A negative keyword tells Amazon not to show your ad on a search. It is the least glamorous setting in an ad account and one of the most valuable, because a click on a search that never converts is pure margin loss: no sale, no ranking benefit, nothing to show for the money. In the accounts we take over, the search term report is usually the first place we find savings, and almost always the quickest.

This guide covers how negative keywords and negative product targets work on Amazon today, where to set them, the current limits and timings, and the routine we run every week. It sits under our hub guide to Amazon advertising in the UK. For how negatives fit into campaign structure and bidding, see our Amazon PPC strategy.

What negative keywords do

Keyword and automatic targeting both reach further than the words you typed. Broad match can show your ad on searches that don’t contain your keyword at all, and phrase and exact match include close variations such as plurals and misspellings². Automatic campaigns go further again, matching your ad to loosely related searches and to other products’ pages². That reach is how you discover new searches that sell. It is also how a bamboo chopping board ends up paying for clicks on “glass chopping board”.

Negatives draw the boundary. Amazon recommends them for low-performing keywords, searches you don’t want your ads against, and, in product targeting, low-performing or unsuitable ASINs. They work in both automatic and manual campaigns⁵.

Negatives are not only for waste. They are also how you stop your own campaigns competing with each other. When a search proves itself in a discovery campaign and moves into its own exact-match campaign, adding it as a negative exact in the discovery campaign keeps the two from bidding against each other for the same shopper.

Negative exact vs negative phrase

Amazon offers two negative match types¹:

There is no negative broad match¹. A one-word negative phrase is the widest net Amazon gives you, so use it carefully: “glass” is safe for a bamboo board, but a negative phrase on “board” would switch off almost every search you want.

Two rules catch people out. You can’t change the match type of a negative once it exists; delete it and add it again¹. And close variations apply to negatives too, so a negative exact on “chopping board set” will also block “chopping boards set”.

Negative product targeting

Negative product targets stop your ad showing on chosen product pages. They apply to product-targeted and automatic ads, and you can exclude individual ASINs or whole brands¹.

You will find candidates in the same report. In automatic campaigns and product-targeted ad groups, the search term report lists ASINs as well as words: an entry such as “b00ipgvvz4” is the product page your ad appeared on⁴. Amazon’s own example is a camera lens advertised next to a camera it doesn’t fit; adding that camera as a negative ASIN stops the wasted placement⁵.

Brand-level negatives are useful for keeping your own products out of each other’s way, and for stopping product-targeted ads on brands whose shoppers rarely switch.

Campaign level or ad group level

You can add negatives to a whole campaign or to a single ad group⁵. Amazon spells out the difference for negative products: a negative set at ad group level affects only the product-attribute and automatic targets in that ad group, while one set at campaign level affects every ad group in the campaign¹. Negative keywords work the same way.

Our practice:

• Campaign level for searches that are wrong for every product in the campaign: a material you don’t sell, a competitor’s model number, “second hand”, “free”.
• Campaign level for proven terms that have moved to their own exact-match campaign, added as negative exact in the discovery campaigns.
• Ad group level when a search is wrong for one product group but right for another in the same campaign, for example “large” when one ad group holds only small sizes.

Sponsored Brands campaigns take negative keywords and products as well⁹, and its search terms appear in a search term report too⁴. Don’t leave them out of the routine.

Limits and timing

Amazon’s limits, updated in July 2026, are generous enough that few brands will reach them³:

Amazon says it now raises limits as advertisers approach them, and that you can archive old campaigns and targets to free space³.

Timing matters more than limits. We rechecked this today: Amazon’s help gives a buffer of 72 hours for negative keywords and 96 hours for negative products or ASINs before they take effect¹. On top of that, conversions can take up to 12 hours to reach reports, and a seller’s Sponsored Products sale counts if it happens within 7 days of the click⁶. So the last week of any report is incomplete, and a negative added on Monday will not show in your numbers until later in the week. Amazon’s targeting guide suggests letting negatives run for two weeks or more before changing your strategy⁵.

For large accounts, negatives can be uploaded in bulk through Bulk Operations¹: download a bulksheet, add one negative per row against the campaign or ad group, and upload it⁷.

The search term report

The search term report is where negatives come from. It shows the searches shoppers used before they clicked your ads, or the search Amazon inferred when your ad appeared somewhere without one, such as an off-Amazon placement⁴. Key facts:

• It is available to sellers, vendors and authors for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands⁴.
• It only lists search terms that received at least one click, so its impressions won’t match the campaign manager⁴.
• It can be run as a summary or by day, and its lookback window is 65 days⁴.
• For sellers, its sales and orders columns use the 7-day window: “Sales (promoted)” is the advertised SKU and “Sales (halo)” covers other SKUs bought after the click⁴.

Search term data also sits in the campaign manager, where you can add terms as negatives from the ad group’s search terms section⁴. We still download the report, because 65 days is short. Without your own copies, you lose the history that tells you whether a term failed once or keeps failing. Our Amazon keyword research guide covers using the same report to find terms worth targeting.

A profit threshold for cutting a term

Most advice says “add a negative after X clicks”. A fixed click count ignores what a click costs and what an order is worth. We use a threshold based on money.

For a term with no orders, the question is simple: has it already spent more than one order would have earned? If clicks × CPC exceeds your margin per order, even the next click converting would leave it in loss. That gives a click threshold for each product:

Why two stages? Because a good term can go a while without converting. At a 12% conversion rate there is about a 22% chance of 12 clicks in a row without an order (0.88 multiplied by itself 12 times), but only about a 5% chance of 24. The first stage limits the cost of waiting; the second is the point where bad luck becomes an unlikely explanation. It also lines up with Amazon’s own suggestion of judging a term after at least 20 clicks⁵.

For a term that does convert, compare its cost per click with what a click is worth to you: conversion rate × margin per order. That is its break-even CPC. A relevant term that converts but costs too much needs a lower bid, not a negative.

The biggest loss is not a negative at all. “chopping board” converts at 7.5% (9 orders from 120 clicks), so a click is worth 7.5% × £8.00 = £0.60, and the term is paying £0.95. Making it a negative would throw away nine orders a month; cutting the bid to £0.60 keeps the term and stops the loss. The ROAS calculator does the same arithmetic as a break-even ROAS.

The three terms that do need negatives cost £38.30 in a month on one product. Across a catalogue of a few hundred products, that pattern is how a few thousand pounds a month disappears without anyone noticing.

The weekly routine

This is the routine we run every week on every account. It is our practice, not an Amazon requirement. The order matters, because harvesting winners before adding negatives avoids blocking a search you were about to move.

Once a month, look back over the saved reports for terms that failed in more than one month and for negatives that might now be blocking something useful, such as a search that has become relevant because you launched a new size.

Common mistakes

1. Negative phrase on a word you need. A negative phrase on “set” for a board sold singly blocks “chopping board set”, but also “set of knives and board” if you sell bundles. Read the phrase as Amazon will: any search that contains it.
2. Negating relevant terms that are simply too expensive. Fix the bid. A negative throws away the orders as well as the cost.
3. Judging too early. A report that ends yesterday is missing late orders, and a new negative needs up to 72 hours¹⁶.
4. Ignoring ASIN rows. In automatic and product-targeted campaigns, a lot of spend sits on product pages, not searches⁴.
5. Forgetting Sponsored Brands. It has its own search term report and takes its own negatives⁴⁹.
6. Letting the history go. Sixty-five days is all Amazon keeps⁴. A spreadsheet of weekly downloads is the cheapest analytics tool you will ever own.

Wasted spend is one of the few costs in an Amazon business that can fall to almost nothing without losing a sale. A weekly hour on the search term report, with a clear money threshold, is usually worth more than any bid tool. To see what your advertising leaves you with overall, the Profit X-Ray works out break-even ACoS, TACoS and profit after ads from four monthly figures.