Amazon Search Term Report: The Harvesting Workflow
If you open one report every week, make it this one. It shows the exact words shoppers typed to reach your ads — and it’s where discovery turns into decisions.
The Amazon search-term report shows the actual customer searches that triggered your ads, with the metrics for each one. It’s the engine of optimization: you harvest converting search terms into manual exact campaigns, negate the wasters, and route traffic between campaigns. Nearly every good PPC decision starts in this report.
01Keyword vs search term — the crucial distinction
These two words get used interchangeably and they’re not the same. A keyword is what you target — the term you added to a campaign. A search term is what the shopper actually typed. On broad and phrase match, and in automatic campaigns, a single keyword can trigger dozens of different real searches. The search-term report is the only place you see those real searches — and that gap between what you targeted and what people actually searched is where all the opportunity (and all the waste) lives.
02Where to find it
In the current console, the report lives under Measurement & Reporting → Reporting, where you create a Sponsored Products search-term report for your chosen date range. (Amazon moved to unified reporting in 2026; older separate report tools are being retired.) One thing to know: the report only shows search terms from campaigns that can reveal them — automatic, broad, and phrase. Exact-match campaigns show the term you already chose, so the discovery value comes from your wider-targeting campaigns.
03What the columns tell you
Don’t drown in columns — a handful carry the decisions. For each search term you get impressions and clicks (interest), spend (cost), orders and sales (return), and the two ratios that matter most: CVR (orders ÷ clicks) and ACoS (spend ÷ sales). Read them together. High clicks with no orders is a waster. Good orders at a low ACoS is a winner. A term with two clicks and no data is just noise — not yet a decision. The full definitions are in the metrics lesson.
04Sort every term into four buckets
The report is only useful if it drives action. Sort every search term into one of four buckets, each with a clear next step:
| Bucket | Signal | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Converter | Sales at a healthy ACoS / CVR | Harvest into a manual exact campaign; negate it upstream |
| Waster | Enough clicks, no or few sales, high ACoS | Add as a negative or cut the bid |
| Irrelevant | Wrong product or wrong intent | Negate immediately (phrase if it’s a theme) |
| Watchlist | Promising but thin data | Leave running; revisit next week |
That’s the whole job. Every review is just sorting new search terms into these four piles and doing what each pile demands.
05The harvesting workflow
The converter bucket drives the loop that defines Sponsored Products management:
- Harvest — take a proven converting search term and add it as an exact-match keyword in a manual performance campaign, where you control its bid precisely.
- Bridge — add that same term as a negative in the auto/broad campaign that discovered it, so the two don’t bid against each other.
- Bid — set the exact keyword’s bid using your profit math from the bidding lesson, then scale as it performs.
Run this consistently and your discovery campaigns become a conveyor belt, steadily feeding your performance campaigns a supply of proven keywords.
06The data threshold — don’t act too early
The most common mistake here is reacting to noise. A search term with three clicks and no sale hasn’t failed — it just hasn’t been tested. Wait for enough data before you cut a relevant term: a common threshold is around 20–30+ clicks with zero sales before negating. Conversely, don’t harvest a term as a “winner” off a single order either — look for a genuine pattern. Irrelevant terms are the exception: negate those on sight, no data required, because they’ll never convert regardless of sample size.
07Harvesting product targets too
The report doesn’t only surface search terms. In automatic campaigns, it also reveals which ASINs your ads appeared on and converted against. Treat those the same way: harvest the converting ASINs into a manual product-targeting campaign with their own bids, and negate the poor performers. Keywords and products both flow through the same discover-then-scale pipeline.
08A weekly cadence
Turn it into a light, repeatable habit:
- Pull the report for the last 1–2 weeks
- Sort each new term into the four buckets
- Harvest converters to exact; negate them upstream
- Negate wasters (past the click threshold) and irrelevants
- Harvest converting ASINs into product targeting
- Note watchlist terms to recheck next week
- A keyword is what you target; a search term is what the shopper typed — the report reveals the second.
- It lives under Measurement & Reporting → Reporting; discovery comes from auto, broad, and phrase campaigns.
- Sort every term into four buckets: converter, waster, irrelevant, watchlist — each with a set action.
- Harvest converters into exact, bridge with negatives, and scale with profit-based bids.
- Wait ~20–30+ clicks before cutting relevant terms; negate irrelevant ones instantly.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Amazon search term report?
It’s a Sponsored Products report showing the actual customer searches that triggered your ads, along with each term’s impressions, clicks, spend, orders, sales, conversion rate, and ACoS. It’s the primary source for optimizing keywords and negatives.
What’s the difference between a keyword and a search term?
A keyword is the term you choose to target in a campaign. A search term is what the shopper actually typed. On broad, phrase, and automatic targeting, one keyword can trigger many different search terms — which is exactly what the report reveals.
How do I use the search term report?
Sort each search term into four buckets: converters (harvest into exact-match campaigns), wasters (negate or cut the bid), irrelevant terms (negate immediately), and watchlist terms (keep monitoring). Then bridge harvested winners with negatives so campaigns don’t compete.
How often should I check the search term report?
Weekly or every two weeks for most accounts. That’s frequent enough to catch new converting terms and cut waste quickly, without acting on samples too small to be meaningful.
Where is the search term report in Amazon?
In the current console it’s under Measurement & Reporting → Reporting, where you create a Sponsored Products search-term report for your date range. Amazon consolidated its reporting into this unified tool in 2026.
Or return to Module 3: Sponsored Products or the course hub.