How to Read Your Amazon Search Term Report (and Find Wasted Spend)

Last updated 2026 · ~5 min read

Your Amazon Search Term report is the single most valuable data source in your PPC account. It shows the actual customer searches your ads matched — which means it also shows exactly where your budget is leaking. Here's how to read it.

Where to find it

In Seller Central: Advertising → Campaign Manager → Reports (or the Sponsored Products reporting area) → create a Search Term report for Sponsored Products. Choose a date range of 30–60 days and export as CSV/Excel.

The columns that matter

• Customer Search Term — the real query the shopper typed. This is the star of the report.
• Clicks and Spend — what each term cost you.
• 7 Day Total Sales and 7 Day Total Orders — whether it produced anything.
• ACOS — advertising cost of sales; how efficient (or not) a converting term is.
• Match Type / Campaign — where to add the negative once you find waste.

How to spot wasted spend

Two patterns account for most PPC waste:

1. Zero-order drains — terms with real Spend but 0 orders. Filter for spend > $0 and orders = 0, sort by spend descending. The top of that list is money you're setting on fire every period.
2. High-ACoS bleeders — terms that do convert, but at an ACoS above your break-even, so each sale loses money.

A rule of thumb: any term with 5+ clicks and 0 sales is a strong negative-keyword candidate. Give low-click terms a little more data before cutting them.

Turn findings into action

Take the zero-order terms and add them as Negative Exact (or Negative Phrase for whole irrelevant themes) at the ad-group or campaign level. Then repeat the review weekly — auto campaigns surface new junk terms constantly. See our full guide on Amazon PPC negative keywords.

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