Amazon Search Term Report: How to Use It to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns

The Amazon Search Term Report is a downloadable report available in Amazon Advertising (Seller Central > Campaign Manager > Reports > Search Term Report) that shows the exact search queries buyers used when they clicked your ads — along with impressions, clicks, spend, orders, and sales attributed to each query.

This report is the single most valuable data source for optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns. It answers the question: "Exactly what are buyers searching for that leads to my product?" The answer is often surprising — you will find profitable keywords you never thought to bid on, and wasteful queries spending your budget with zero conversions.

Most sellers set up their campaigns and then check ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) at the campaign level without drilling into the individual search queries driving that ACoS. This is like optimizing your business based only on your bank account balance, without looking at your P&L. The search term report is your advertising P&L.

For Taiwan brands newer to Amazon advertising, analyzing the search term report monthly (or weekly for high-spend accounts) is the single highest-ROI habit you can build in your Amazon business. The improvements compound: better keywords and fewer negatives mean lower ACoS, higher profits, and more budget available for effective keywords.

Download: in Seller Central, go to Campaign Manager > Reports > Sponsored Products > Search Term. Select a date range of the last 30–90 days. Download as CSV. Wider date ranges provide more statistically significant data but may include outdated seasonal patterns.

Key columns: Customer Search Term (what the buyer typed), Campaign Name, Ad Group Name, Match Type (broad/phrase/exact/auto), Impressions (times the ad was shown), Clicks, Spend, Orders, Sales, ACoS (Spend/Sales × 100).

Sort by Spend descending to identify where you are spending the most. Sort by Orders descending to identify what is generating the most conversions. The highest-value analysis is identifying terms with high Spend but zero Orders — pure waste.

Profitable keyword criteria: ACoS below your target ACoS (typically 20–35% depending on your margins), minimum 5 clicks before judging (you need statistical significance), and relevance to your product (a query that converts but is tangentially related may generate returns and negative reviews).

Unprofitable keyword criteria: 10+ clicks with zero orders (almost certainly not converting for your product), high ACoS above 60% with limited volume (not worth the cost), or search terms completely unrelated to your product (indicates broad match is casting too wide a net).

The most effective PPC optimization workflow is called the "Auto-to-Manual" or "Search Term Mining" approach: use Automatic Targeting campaigns to discover which keywords convert, then promote those to targeted Manual campaigns with Exact or Phrase match.

Step 1: run an Automatic Targeting campaign with a moderate daily budget ($15–$30/day) for 2–4 weeks. Auto campaigns let Amazon match your ads to search queries it believes are relevant — you discover keywords you never would have thought of.

Step 2: download the Search Term Report for your Auto campaign after 2–4 weeks. Identify all queries with orders and ACoS below your target.

Step 3: add those profitable queries as Exact Match or Phrase Match keywords in a new Manual campaign. Set bids based on their historical CPC from the Auto campaign data, starting 10–20% higher to capture more impressions.

Step 4: add those same profitable keywords as negative keywords in your Auto campaign (Negative Exact match). This prevents the Auto campaign from spending on queries that are now covered by your Manual campaigns — preventing internal competition and inflated costs.

Result: over time, your Auto campaign becomes a discovery tool for new keywords, and your Manual campaigns capture proven performers with more controlled bidding. This workflow consistently reduces overall ACoS by 15–30% for accounts that implement it systematically.

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for search queries that are not converting for your product. Adding the right negatives is often more impactful than adding more positive keywords.

Types of negatives to add: competitor brand names (your ad showing for "Competitor Brand knife" rarely converts and costs you clicks), DIY and educational queries ("how to sharpen a knife," "knife making tutorial"), irrelevant adjectives ("wooden knife," "ceramic knife" if you sell stainless), and any high-spend, zero-order queries from your Search Term Report.

Negative match types: Negative Exact blocks only the exact query. Negative Phrase blocks any query containing that phrase. For high-spend irrelevant terms, add as Negative Exact at the keyword level and Negative Phrase at the ad group or campaign level for broader protection.

Negative keyword list building: add negatives iteratively — not all at once. Review your Search Term Report weekly for the first 3 months of a new campaign, then monthly after stabilization. A campaign with 50 well-chosen negative keywords typically outperforms a campaign with zero negatives spending 40% of its budget on irrelevant queries.

Campaign-level vs. ad group-level negatives: add truly irrelevant terms (competitor names, unrelated product categories) at the campaign level so they apply to all ad groups. Add product-variant negatives (wrong size, wrong color) at the ad group level where only specific ad groups are affected.

Keyword-level bidding decisions: for each keyword in your Manual campaigns, the target bid should reflect its specific ACoS and your target. If a keyword has ACoS of 10% against a 25% target, you can afford to raise the bid by up to 2.5x to capture more volume at the same target ACoS. If ACoS is 45% against a 25% target, reduce the bid by 40–50%.

Bid adjustment frequency: change bids no more frequently than every 7 days per keyword. Amazon's advertising algorithm needs time to respond to bid changes. Adjusting bids daily creates instability and makes it impossible to measure the impact of any single change.

Rule-based bidding automation: Amazon Advertising allows you to create automated rules ("If ACoS > 35% for the last 30 days with > 5 clicks, decrease bid by 20%"). These rules handle routine bid maintenance but should be supplemented by manual review — automated rules cannot catch context-specific situations.

Dayparting: Amazon Advertising allows bid modifiers by hour of day and day of week. If your Search Term data shows that conversions are much higher on weekends (common for home and kitchen products), apply a 20–30% bid increase on Saturdays and Sundays to capture more share during peak conversion periods.

Monthly optimization habit: set aside 2 hours each month to review your Search Term Report, add profitable terms to Manual campaigns, add new negatives to Auto campaigns, and adjust bids on underperforming keywords. Sellers who maintain this habit consistently outperform those who set and forget their campaigns.