Skip to main content

Search terms

A keyword is what you told Amazon to bid on. A search term is what a shopper actually typed before your ad showed up. The two often diverge: a broad-match keyword for "phone case" can trigger clicks for "iphone 15 pro case with strap," and every one of those actual queries is a search term with its own spend, sales, and ACOS. This tab is where you find the search terms worth turning into keywords (harvesting) and the ones quietly burning budget (negating).

Before you start​

Opening the tab​

The Search Terms tab lives in the Sponsored Ads Manager under Advanced mode: it isn't part of the simplified Essentials layout, since search-term triage assumes some comfort with raw query data. (A direct /search-terms link redirects here automatically.)

If you're in Essentials mode, open Recommendations in the sidebar and review search-term opportunities there instead (the review screen's breadcrumb reads Recommendations / Search term recommendations). See Recommendations.

Each row is one search term with its performance metrics for the selected date range. Filter and group the same way you would in Campaigns or Targets, and use the toolbar to add negatives, add positive targets, or launch the Campaign Creator directly from a selection of terms.

Reading search terms​

Sort by spend to find where money is going, or by ACOS to find where it's going badly. A search term with strong conversions and a low ACOS is a harvest candidate: give it its own dedicated keyword so you can bid on it precisely instead of relying on broad match to keep finding it. A search term with real clicks and zero sales is a negate candidate: block it so it stops eating budget.

Select rows and use the toolbar to Add Negative (creates a negative keyword on the source campaign by default, or choose Selected campaigns / All campaigns under "Apply to" to block the term across Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns; the dialog previews how many negatives will be created and skips ones that already exist) or Add Target (creates a new positive target from the selection). See Harvest & Negate for the fuller automated version of this workflow, including Amazon and Search Query Performance-sourced recommendations.

Filtering by word list​

The advanced filters include Search Term Includes: give it a list of words and the page narrows to search terms containing any of them — the table, summary cards, and chart all follow. Its counterpart Search Term Excludes hides terms containing any of the listed words. Search Term Is matches the whole search term exactly (case-insensitive); add several terms to match any of them.

You don't have to type words one at a time. Paste a whole list — separated by commas, tabs, or one per line, straight from a spreadsheet column or an n-gram export — and it becomes individual chips automatically, with duplicates dropped. This works in every chip-style filter on the page, and the filter survives a page reload.

N-gram analysis​

Individual search terms only get you so far: a single low-performing term might just be noise. N-gram analysis breaks every search term into its component words (or pairs/triples of words) and aggregates performance by word, so you can see which words are driving results or wasting spend across the full set of phrases.

To open it, select one or more search terms in the table and click the n-gram analysis action in the toolbar: your selection seeds the analysis, or leave nothing selected to analyze everything matching your current filters.

In the dialog:

  • Switch between 1-gram, 2-gram, and 3-gram views to look at single words, word pairs, or word triples
  • Three stat filters (Total, With Orders, Zero Orders) let you jump straight to n-grams that never converted
  • The minimum terms slider filters out n-grams that only appeared in a handful of search terms, so a single fluke query doesn't skew the picture
  • Each row shows impressions, clicks, orders, same-SKU vs. other-SKU orders and sales, and the full metric set (CTR, CVR, CPC, ACOS, ROAS, RPC, CPA, AOV)

Worked example: if the word "cheap" shows up across a dozen search terms with real clicks but zero orders, that's a pattern a single search term wouldn't reveal on its own. It says something about what that word signals to shoppers on your listing. Select it and add it as a negative to stop every search term containing it, or drill into which specific search terms fed that n-gram to negate more surgically.

Select n-grams and choose Add Negative to negate every word/phrase in the selection, or Add as Term to bookmark it as a brand, competitor, or other tracked term. Filter Terms closes the dialog and applies your selected n-grams as the Search Term Includes filter, so the table shows exactly the search terms behind those words — useful for reviewing what you're about to negate, or for exporting just that slice. Export the current view to CSV from the toolbar.

Related​