Across 170+ Amazon brands and over $29M in managed ad spend, the single most common PPC waste pattern we see is the same beginner habit — a seller who’s set up campaigns but has never actually opened the search term report. The report is sitting there, downloadable in one click, telling them exactly where their money leaked last week. And nobody reads it.
This post walks through the columns, the weekly workflow, and the two actions you’ll take on almost every term: negate it, or isolate it. If you can do those two things well, you’ll cut 8–15% of your ad spend within 30 days.
What is the Amazon search term report?
The report exists for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display — each downloaded separately. For most sellers, the Sponsored Products search term report is where 80% of the signal lives. If you’re new to how a search term is different from a keyword, start with Amazon search term vs keyword — it’s a five-minute read that saves you a lot of confusion here.
Where do you find the search term report?
Amazon also exposes the same data via the bulk operations API, which is how larger accounts pull it into their own dashboards. For a seller reading the report by hand, the CSV download is fine — Excel or Google Sheets is the whole toolkit.
What do the columns mean?
Here’s what each of the columns actually tells you:
| Column | What it means | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Customer search term | The exact shopper query, or the ASIN if Amazon matched your ad via product targeting | The ground truth. This is what you paid for. |
| Keyword / Targeting | The keyword or product target you set in the campaign | The lever you actually control |
| Match type | Broad, phrase, exact, auto, or product target | Explains why one keyword produced many different search terms |
| Clicks | Number of clicks in the date range | Signal volume — no clicks means no decision |
| Spend | Dollars spent on those clicks | The number to sort by |
| Orders | 7-day attributed orders | The other side of the equation with spend |
| Sales | Attributed revenue from those orders | Feeds ACOS and ROAS |
| ACOS | Ad spend ÷ ad sales | Cost efficiency of that specific term |
Sort by Spend descending on the first pass. That’s it. The top 20 rows are where the money is concentrated, and those 20 rows produce most of the weekly decisions.
How do you actually read the report each week?
The 20-minute weekly workflow, step by step:
- Download last 7 days of the Sponsored Products search term report
- Sort by Spend descending
- Filter to rows with 10+ clicks (below that, wait another week for signal)
- For each row, ask two questions: did it convert? and is the ACOS profitable?
- Zero orders after 10+ clicks → add as negative exact in the campaign it ran in
- Orders + ACOS well above break-even → same treatment or reduce the bid
- Orders + ACOS at or below break-even → promote to its own single-keyword campaign for tighter control
- Save the report snapshot with the date. Next week you’ll compare.
That’s the loop. Doesn’t take longer than the average Slack scroll.
If you’d rather skip the manual sort, drop the CSV straight into the free Profit-Leak Detector — it runs entirely in your browser (no login, no email, nothing uploaded), takes your margin input, and flags the SKUs where ad spend has quietly passed contribution. Same weekly logic, run against true profit instead of ACOS.
Which search terms should you promote or negate?
The negate-versus-promote decision isn’t cosmetic. Negating wasted spend puts dollars back on your P&L within days — the full call on when to add a negative keyword, and whether to use negative exact or phrase, is worth getting right. Promoting winners into isolated campaigns lets you bid more aggressively where it works, without polluting the parent campaign’s average — the exact five-step workflow for turning a converting search term into its own exact-match keyword walks through it end to end.
For a deeper look at the ACOS side of that equation — what “profitable” actually means for your SKU — read how to reduce Amazon ACOS without losing sales volume. And for the timing question of when to run those bids across the day, Amazon PPC day parting covers the hour-of-day cost curve most sellers never map.
When does it make sense to get help?
The search term report is Leak #1 in The Profit-Leak Method: non-incremental and wasted ad spend. It’s also the easiest of the six leaks to seal, because Amazon literally hands you the data in a CSV. The reason it stays unfixed in most accounts isn’t complexity — it’s discipline.
Two ways to get help before you outgrow the manual pass. Drop the CSV into our free Profit-Leak Detector — it processes the file locally in your browser (nothing uploaded, no login, no email gate), bakes COGS and fees into the math, and exports a leak list you can feed straight into a negative-keyword harvest or campaign restructure. Or if you’d rather have someone run the pass every week and just send you the recovered-spend number, get a free audit — we’ll pull your last 90 days of search term data and show you exactly how much is currently going to terms that don’t convert.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find the Amazon search term report?
In Seller Central, go to Advertising → Campaign Manager → Measurement and Reporting → Sponsored Products Reports. Choose Search term report, pick your date range, and download. It runs on Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display separately — check all three if you’re spending on all three.
How often should I check the search term report?
Weekly for active accounts. Daily during launches, category climbs, or event windows like Prime Day. The longer you wait between passes, the more wasted spend piles up on the same repeat-offender queries. Weekly hygiene beats quarterly cleanups every time.
What ACOS should trigger a negative keyword?
It depends on the SKU’s margin. If a search term has more than 10 clicks with zero orders, negate it regardless of ACOS — you already know it doesn’t convert. If it has orders but ACOS is 2× your break-even, either negate or move it to a lower bid. Never negate on one weak week without checking the four-week trend.
What’s the difference between the keyword column and the customer search term column?
The keyword column is what you targeted in your campaign. The customer search term column is what the shopper actually typed or the ASIN Amazon matched your ad to. One targeted keyword can produce dozens of different search terms depending on match type and Amazon’s matching system.
How many clicks before I take action on a search term?
As a rule of thumb, 10 clicks with zero orders is enough signal to negate. For high-margin SKUs where a single order can pay for many clicks, wait for 15–20 clicks. For low-margin SKUs, act at 5–7. The click threshold isn’t universal — it’s a function of your break-even ACOS.
Can I read search terms from automatic campaigns the same way?
Yes, and it’s arguably where the search term report is most useful. Automatic campaigns hand the matching decision to Amazon, so the customer search term column reveals real buyer language you’d never think to target manually. Mine automatic campaigns weekly for keyword promotion candidates.
Is there a faster way than sorting the CSV by hand?
Yes — drop the search term CSV into the free Profit-Leak Detector. It runs entirely in your browser, so nothing gets uploaded, and it bakes COGS and fees into the math to flag the SKUs where ad spend has crossed contribution. Faster than a manual sort and honest about profit, not just ACOS.
The bottom line
The search term report is the closest thing Amazon gives you to a receipt for your ad budget. Every dollar, mapped to the query that spent it. The sellers who read it weekly seal Leak #1 of The Profit-Leak Method as a matter of habit — 8–15% of ad spend back in the P&L, month after month. The sellers who don’t read it are the ones asking, six months later, where the profit went.
Twenty minutes a week. That’s the whole ask.
Want us to run the weekly search-term pass on your account and show you exactly how much is going to terms that don’t convert? Get a free audit — we’ll pull your last 90 days and quantify the leak.