Amazon negative keywords: how to find, add and manage them

Amazon negative keywords are search terms you exclude from a Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands campaign so your ads stop showing on searches that won't convert. You add them as negative exact or negative phrase at the campaign or ad group level, and you find them in your search term report. We manage $100M+ in annual Amazon client revenue across 50+ Amazon accounts. Below, we cover match types and limits, where to apply negatives, how to find and add them, and how to measure results.

TL;DR

What are Amazon negative keywords?

Just as keywords tell Amazon when to show your ads in the search results, negative keywords tell Amazon when not to show your ads. Say you sell women's winter coats and "winter coat" is one of your keywords. Your ad could appear when someone searches for "boy's winter coat." That happens because the search term contains "winter coat."

The shopper may then unknowingly click on your ad, discover it's not what they were looking for, and return to the search results. You'll still be charged for the click, resulting in wasted ad spend. In our experience, if the shopper doesn't click on your ad, Amazon may read that as low interest in your product. In the accounts we manage, weak engagement can weigh on rank over time and may push your listing lower in the organic search results.

Both scenarios can be avoided by adding the negative keyword "boy's winter coat" to prevent your ad from showing to that audience. Additionally, including competitor brand names as keywords can attract irrelevant traffic unless you are reselling or specifically targeting those brands. Excluding competitor brand names as negative keywords helps avoid wasted spend and ensures your ads reach the right shoppers.

Refining your keywords and negative keywords also helps ensure your ads are shown to shoppers whose search intent matches your product. That improves the relevance of your traffic and leads.

Why are negative keywords important for Amazon PPC?

To understand the importance of negative keywords, let's first briefly look at the importance of keywords. Keywords allow shoppers to find your product. Without keywords, you'd have no clicks and no sales.

To have success with negative keywords, you need to have strong keywords to begin with. Keywords fall under three terms:

• Product terms: Terms that describe your product, like "red raincoat" and "waterproof speakers." For ideas, start typing into the search bar and see what common terms pop up.
• Competitor terms: Competitor-specific terms can sway some of a well-known competitor's customers. Look at the terms in competitor listings and try something similar.
• Audience terms: These are harder to come up with, and worth testing if your product has audience-specific design features. A throw pillow seller could try "french country decor."

It's important to do the research for all three terms to develop a keyword strategy. Don't forget that your product listing needs to "message match" your PPC keywords. Picture a shopper who finds your product in a search for "gray sweater for men." You don't want your listing to then call it a "cotton shirt."

Ultimately, without negative keywords, you end up showing your ad to shoppers that aren't looking for your specific product and wasting your marketing dollars. Amazon will try to show your ad to as many people as possible. It's up to you to tell them exactly who you want to see the ad and who you don't. Negative keywords refine who sees your ads, which lowers your ACoS (advertising cost of sales, ad spend divided by ad revenue) and may support organic rank.

If you are new to Amazon PPC ads, check out this step-by-step guide to setting up your campaign. Negative keywords pay off in four ways.

Cut wasted ad spend

By using negative keywords, you limit the amount of ad spend you waste on click-throughs from audiences that aren't right for your product. You get fewer high click non-converters dragging down your marketing budget. You can focus your ads on the keywords that have proven to produce sales. You also avoid the keywords that have eaten into your ad budget previously.

Amazon Ads makes the same point in its Sponsored Products best practices guide: negative targeting can mean you spend less budget on placements that aren't relevant to your brand.

Free budget for converting keywords

Along with wasted ad spend directly, you're also avoiding lost opportunity when you add negative keywords to your campaigns. By focusing your ad budget on the search terms most likely to get sales, you open up more budget for your highest-converting keywords.

You can use the saved ad spend to focus on high-conversion keywords or to test new keywords that may provide new opportunities for your products. Every negative you add also refines your keywords for future PPC ads and organic listings.

Protect your product ranking

Amazon considers more than your bid when determining where to list your ad in the search results. In the accounts we manage, irrelevant clicks that don't convert tend to drag on conversion rate, which can weigh on organic rank. In our experience, ads that get low click-throughs may also show lower in the search results.

Negative keywords can improve the CTR on your ads by showing them to more precisely targeted searches. In our experience, low click-throughs may also affect how your product organically ranks. That can force you to spend even more money to get sales.

Stop keyword cannibalization

If you have multiple products in the same category, you should be using negative keywords to avoid keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or more of your products compete against each other in the search results under the same keyword. If your campaign structure is not optimized, your ads compete within your account, which can split clicks and waste spend.

Use negative keywords to ensure only your most relevant product shows in the search results, which can improve CTR and keep your ad spend focused. A well-organized campaign structure, including the strategic use of negative keywords, prevents your own ads from competing against each other.

The same applies inside one parent listing. Amazon usually shows only one variation from a parent for a given search, so two variations bidding on the same keyword compete with each other. When we run ads for a bundle variation, we keep it on bundle-specific terms such as "bundle" or "pack" and negate those terms in the main variation's campaigns, so the bundle never bids against the hero product.

What is the difference between negative exact and negative phrase match?

Negative exact match

Exact match requires the search term to be the specific word or phrase you've entered, accounting for minor misspellings and plural form. For example, an exact match negative keyword of "bath towel" would stop your ad from showing for the search terms "bath towel" or "bath towels." Your ad would still show if someone entered "blue bath towel."

Negative phrase match

Phrase match casts a slightly wider net than exact match. Enter "bath towel" as a negative phrase match keyword, and your ad won't show for "blue bath towel" or "large bath towel." It would still show up for the search term "towels for the bathroom" or "large towels."

Negative phrase match blocks your ad from appearing in searches that contain an exact phrase. That makes it useful for excluding groups of related queries and controlling when your ads are shown based on specific search terms.

Amazon Ads Support Center publishes the Amazon Ads negative keyword limits. Negative exact allows up to 10 words and negative phrase up to 4 words, both capped at 80 characters. You can't change a negative keyword's match type after you save it.

The table below compares the three match types as negatives, using those Amazon Ads limits.

Read the table as a division of labor. Negative exact trims single queries inside an ad group, and negative phrase blocks whole query families across a campaign.

Broad match

Broad match terms are only open to regular keywords. They're not available in Amazon as negative keywords. Broad match keywords are more encompassing than exact match or phrase match keywords, and they aim to capture a wider audience of related terms.

For instance, a broad match keyword of "bath towel" would show your ad for "blue bath towel," "large bath towel," and "towels for the bathroom." This is why adding in the negative keywords is vital to the success of an Amazon PPC campaign.

Should you add negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level?

Amazon allows negative keywords to be added at the campaign and ad group level. What negative keyword type you use and where you use it will depend on your goals.

Exact match negative keywords are generally best used at the ad group level. Applying negatives to one ad group allows for granular control over which ads show for specific searches, helping you target traffic more precisely. Using separate ad groups for different products or match types also helps avoid keyword overlap and internal competition.

The more specific you can get with your ad groups, the better optimized your negative keywords can be. You may even find it useful to break your campaigns into only one product per ad group. This is especially true in a broad product category that has more than one audience.

At the campaign level, a negative applies to every ad group within the campaign. Due to this, focus on phrase match negative keywords that rule out irrelevant searches within your product category. Phrase match negatives are most helpful at the campaign level if your product category has multiple distinct audiences.

For instance, say you sell electrical toolsets and have a broad keyword of "toolset." Add a phrase match negative keyword of "woodworking toolset," since none of your products fit into that category. Shoppers who search for the broad term "toolset" can still find your product, and you stop paying for shoppers looking specifically for woodworking tools.

Campaign-level negatives work in Sponsored Products. According to Amazon Ads API documentation, Sponsored Brands has no campaign-level negative targeting, so add Sponsored Brands negatives at the ad group level. If you are new to negative keywords, the safest place for you to start is with exact match at the ad group level.

When should you use Amazon negative keywords?

Now that you know the why behind negative keywords, let's look at when you should use them to improve your listing.

Keywords that match your product category

Product categories on Amazon can encompass a large range of products, and some products within those categories have very little overlap in audience. Take books as an example. Books are all one category but can have very different search intents.

A quick search for the term "language education books" demonstrates the importance of refining your broad keywords with negative keywords within a product category. Identifying the right negative keywords ensures your ads are only shown to relevant audiences and prevents unwanted traffic.

The top ad result shows a book about the "scientific laws of life." It's an educational title, unrelated to the language education books shoppers want. This campaign would have benefited from exact match negatives at the ad group level. They would limit which "educational books" searches the ad shows up in.

Related products

Let's say you sell both glass and plastic clear storage containers with a broad keyword of "storage container." Add negative keywords to prevent the two from competing and pushing the more relevant result further down in the search. Without negative keywords, both ads could show up in the results for "plastic storage container" even though only one is relevant to the audience. You may also want campaign-level negatives such as "garage storage containers" if none of your products fit that search term.

Your product description

Knowing which searches you don't want your ad to show for has an extra perk. You can optimize your product listing with the keywords you do want to show for.

You'll be able to remove keywords from your listing that you've identified as negative keywords. In our experience, that can support better organic search results and more sales with less ad spend. Your listing's backend search terms field has a 249-byte limit, so spend that space on your highest-converting keywords and leave out the terms you've negated.

How do you find Amazon negative keywords?

Find your negative keywords in this order:

1. Add obvious mismatches before launch. Use your knowledge of your product and other products in the same category to seed your first negative list.
2. Let your campaigns run for a few weeks. Even keywords with just a few clicks provide valuable insights over time. Waiting also keeps you from removing a keyword that could have done well.
3. Work your search term report using the signals below. The report shows real shopper queries, so it gives you the most strategic list.
4. Refine the list with competitor analysis. It improves your ad targeting once your own data is in.

Let's take a look at the keywords from your search term report you may want to make negative keywords.

Low CTR non-converters

A very low click-through rate tells you Amazon is showing your ad to people who don't see it as a match. Treat it as a relevance check, not a money problem. You pay per click, so a search term that gets impressions but almost no clicks costs very little. In a 30-day snapshot of Sponsored Products search terms across 63 ad accounts we manage, terms with 1,000+ impressions and a CTR under 0.3% took a median 0.35% of spend. Negate them when they are clearly irrelevant, because they can drag on your campaign's CTR, but spend most of your review time on clicks that don't turn into sales.

High spend non-converters

What qualifies as a high spend non-converter is going to depend on your budget and your judgment. No hard-and-fast rule applies here. Look at which keywords take the most of your budget and how many sales you ultimately get from them. If you're not happy with the cost per sale, consider adding them to your negative keyword list.

Our rule: we pause a keyword when it has zero sales after 14 days and has spent twice what a single sale earns before ad costs. Tying the limit to profit per sale, not a flat dollar amount, means a $15 product and a $90 product each get a fair test.

High click non-converters

How many clicks is enough? In the same 63-account snapshot, the median account needed about 13 clicks for each sale, and half of the accounts sat between 8 and 27. The table shows how often a search term still had no sale at each click level. Most terms with fewer than 10 clicks simply haven't had their chance yet, while a term past 30 clicks with no sale is rare.

So we don't use one fixed click number. We start from the account's own clicks per sale: a term that reaches about twice that with no order is a candidate, which is about 25 to 30 clicks for a typical account and fewer for a product that converts well. When a client asked us how many clicks we allow on a new launch, the answer came from the target: at a 15% conversion rate, about 6 to 7 clicks per order, so a term well past that with no sale gets cut sooner. According to Triple Whale's 2026 Amazon Ads benchmarks, the average conversion rate is 10.77%, and it varies by category. If you have keywords performing significantly below the category standard, you'll want to abandon that keyword. If most of your keywords are performing below the standard, take a deeper look at your product page, including reviews.

Search term report

We review search term reports weekly. As previously mentioned, your search term report is the most helpful tool for identifying the best negative keywords for you. Each review shows which search terms are worthwhile and which keywords you need to pull.

Auto campaign targeting groups

Automatic campaigns use four targeting groups: close match, loose match, substitutes and complements. Loose match and substitutes cast the widest net, so review their search terms first. Look for patterns instead of single terms: if every query with "DIY" or "kit" spends without selling, add that word as a negative phrase.

Amazon search bar suggestions

For a new product with no data yet, type your main keywords into the Amazon search bar and note the suggestions that don't fit, such as wrong sizes, materials, price modifiers like "cheap" or "under 20", or other brands. These make a good starting negative list before you spend anything.

Negative reviews and customer questions

Your 1 to 3 star reviews and repeated customer questions show what shoppers expected and didn't get. If buyers keep asking whether a product is "heavy duty" or "commercial grade" and it isn't, add those words as negatives. You cut wasted clicks and future bad reviews at the same time.

What competitors waste money on

When we take over an account, we also check the irrelevant terms competitors keep bidding on and add the obvious ones to the first negative list. Our guide to finding competitor keywords on Amazon shows how to pull those terms.

Negative keyword research tools

If you want to get ahead of the game, pair our Amazon keyword research tool with a negative keyword tool. Keep in mind that these tools can't know with certainty which negative keywords are right for your product. The only way to know for sure is to test.

We review negative keywords weekly because management never stops. This is similar to negative keyword management in Google Ads. Strategies may differ due to the unique nature of user searches on each platform.

Some of the best negative keyword research tools out there are:

• Seller Labs Scope
• Helium 10 Adtomic
• Jungle Scout Keyword Scout

How do negative keywords help you understand your audience?

Not all keywords are right for every campaign, even if they have decent performance. Negative keywords can be used for goals beyond eliminating keywords that cost you more money than they are worth. They also teach you about your audience, how they find your products, and what they might need to know.

By refining your audience with negative keywords, you help boost conversion rates by ensuring your ads are shown to shoppers most likely to buy. For example, if you're growing brand recognition, you need to know how much traffic comes from branded versus generic searches. Set up two campaigns, one branded and one non-branded, to see the split clearly.

In this instance, you'll need to use negative keywords to avoid overlap between the two campaigns. Add your brand name as a negative keyword at the exact and phrase match levels so branded traffic doesn't slip into your non-branded campaign. This also ensures that your campaigns for new and existing audiences aren't competing against each other, causing flawed results and driving up costs.

Once you know which campaign performs better, decide how much effort to put toward growing your brand. You'll also see what information your customer needs to buy.

Where do negative keywords fit in your campaign structure?

In reality, negative keywords are a means to an end. You use negative keywords to better inform the keywords you target in your future campaigns, and even in your organic listings.

With every campaign you run, you identify additional keywords that aren't working. As you narrow down your keywords, begin separating your high-performing keywords into their own campaigns. Running multiple campaigns lets you better manage your ad spend and targeting.

Negative keywords are an invaluable part of the process of optimizing your Amazon PPC campaigns. You cannot skip this part of the process.

How do you add negative keywords in Amazon Ads campaign manager?

These steps run in Amazon Ads campaign manager for both sellers and vendors. To add a large list at once, upload it through bulk operations (see below).

1. Go to campaign manager and select your campaign and ad group.
2. Click "Negative targeting".
3. Click "Add Negative keywords", enter terms, and choose negative exact or negative phrase.
4. Click "Save".

Amazon Ads lists a 72-hour buffer before negative keywords take effect and 96 hours for negative products. Wait at least 3 days before judging the change in your search term report. Pull new terms from that report as you find low CTR non-converters, high spend non-converters, and high click non-converters.

Keep reusable negative lists. Build one list of terms that never fit your brand, such as "free", "used", "DIY", wrong materials or other brands, and apply it to every new campaign at launch. Upload large lists through bulk operations: download the bulksheet, add rows with the negative keyword entity, match type and campaign or ad group, then upload it back. It is faster and leaves fewer gaps than adding terms one by one.

Then graduate winners into exact match campaigns

As your campaigns run and you start to identify your most valuable keywords, start building separate campaigns for those. Amazon Ads recommends checking your search term report for keywords with higher sales, raising bids on them, and adding them as exact match. Add the term as a negative keyword on your broader campaign and then start new exact match campaigns for those high-value keywords.

You may wonder why you'd keep running a broad campaign once you have a list of exact match terms. The answer to that is: so you can be found. By allowing your product to be found through broad keywords, you reach audiences you may not have otherwise found.

Shoppers don't always know exactly what to enter in the search box. Sometimes they don't even know exactly what they want when they start looking. You don't want to lose all of those shoppers by getting too specific. This approach allows you to optimize your ad spend while still testing new keywords and looking for further opportunities.

How often should you update your negative keywords?

You have all the information you need, but you still may be questioning how you can stay up to date on your negative keywords. Depending on how large your product catalog is, you may think you will never be able to keep up with tracking negative keywords.

We review search term reports weekly, and that cadence may be all you need. You can also hire marketers who handle keyword optimization to take care of your negative keywords for you.

Don't ignore adding and evaluating negative keywords in your Amazon PPC campaigns. Choose whatever option works best for your business, and don't put it off any longer.

How do you measure success with Amazon negative keywords?

Adding negative keywords is half the job. The value shows up when you measure their impact and act on the data. By closely monitoring key metrics, you can ensure your negative keyword strategy is actually reducing wasted ad spend and improving your campaign performance.

Start by tracking your click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. After you add negative keywords, look for CTR to move up as your ads reach a more relevant audience. Watch your conversion rate too, and look for it to climb as irrelevant searches stop triggering your ads.

Another crucial metric is your ACoS. One of the main goals of using Amazon negative keywords is to lower your ACoS by cutting out wasted ad spend on irrelevant traffic. Check it with our free Amazon ACoS calculator. If your ACoS drops after updating your negative keyword list, it's a strong sign your strategy is working.

Don't forget to review your search term reports regularly. These reports show you which irrelevant searches and clicks your negative keywords have filtered out. By analyzing this performance data, you can spot patterns, such as recurring irrelevant queries, and keep refining your negative keyword targeting for even better results.

Ultimately, measuring the success of your negative keywords comes down to tracking these key metrics over time. If you see fewer wasted clicks, a higher conversion rate, and a lower ACoS, you're on the right track. Use this data-driven approach to keep your ad spend focused on the right audience and driving more profitable sales.

How we handle negative keywords at Olifant

On every account in our Amazon PPC management service, senior specialists review search term reports every week and optimize daily with our in-house AI platform, Olifant AI. Negatives are part of that routine, not a cleanup project once a quarter.

Campaigns follow the 1-1-1-1 Scaling Method, our campaign architecture framework, which separates four jobs: testing, scaling high performers, exact match campaigns for organic rank, and brand defense. Negative keywords keep those four from overlapping: a term that wins in a testing campaign moves to exact match and becomes a negative in the campaign it came from.

Three habits shape how we use them:

• Structure first, negatives second. We build broad campaigns around tight keyword clusters instead of one generic broad keyword, so there is less irrelevant traffic to clean up later.
• No negatives on noise. If waste is spread across many terms with only a few clicks each, no single negative is justified yet. We let the data build and fix relevance instead.
• Watch broad match drift. When a broad or Sponsored Brands campaign starts pulling generic terms that don't convert, we add negatives at that campaign's level first, then check whether the same drift shows up elsewhere.

The result shows in the numbers. Across the 63 ad accounts in our 30-day snapshot, the median account spent under 5% of its Sponsored Products budget on search terms with 10 or more clicks and no sale.

PPC also runs inside our full Amazon account management, which covers strategy, SEO, creative and profit tracking. That full account work delivered a 171% increase in monthly Amazon revenue and cut ACoS 50% in 60 days for Balanced Tiger, one of our Amazon case studies. Every engagement is backed by our 60-day guarantee: if we don't improve your performance, you don't pay.

Key takeaways

• Negatives decide where ads never run. They tell Amazon which searches should never trigger your ad, so you stop paying for clicks that won't convert.
• Word limits differ by match type. Amazon Ads allows 10 words for negative exact and 4 for negative phrase, with an 80-character cap on both.
• Judge changes after 3 days. Amazon Ads needs 72 hours to apply new negative keywords, so hold off on reading results until then.
• Low CTR is a relevance check, not a cost problem. Low CTR terms took a median 0.35% of spend in our data. Clicks without sales are where budget goes.
• A weekly cadence keeps lists current. We review the search term report weekly, and that cadence works for the accounts we manage.

Frequently asked questions

How many clicks should a search term get before I add it as a negative?

Base it on your own conversion rate. Divide clicks by orders to get your clicks per sale, and treat a term that reaches about twice that with no sale as a candidate. Across 63 ad accounts we manage, the median account needed about 13 clicks per sale, so the cut-off landed around 25 to 30 clicks. Negate clearly irrelevant terms right away, whatever their click count.

Can I add negative keywords to auto campaigns?

Yes. Amazon Ads lets you add negative keywords and negative products to a campaign or ad group from the Negative targeting tab in campaign manager. According to the Amazon Ads Support Center, negative product targets created at the ad group or campaign level affect automatic targets in that scope. Amazon Ads describes negative targeting as optional for both automatic and manual campaigns. We review auto campaign search terms weekly and negate the queries that spend without converting.

What is negative product targeting on Amazon?

Negative product targeting excludes specific ASINs or brands from your product targeting and automatic targeting campaigns. Use it when your ads show on product pages that won't convert. Amazon Ads lists a 96-hour buffer before negative products take effect.

Can I change the match type of a negative keyword?

No. According to the Amazon Ads Support Center, you can't change the match type of an existing negative keyword. We archive the old negative and add a new one with the match type you want.

What happens if I negate a good keyword?

Your ads stop showing for that search term while the negative is active. In our accounts, we archive the negative keyword so the ad becomes eligible for that search again.

How much does Amazon PPC management cost?

Olifant Digital's Amazon PPC management services start from $2,000 per month and are custom for each project, based on the complexity and workload required. Every engagement is backed by our 60-day guarantee: if we don't improve your performance, you don't pay.

Final thoughts

Amazon PPC negative keywords are vital to the success of your campaign. The keywords and negative keywords work in unison to narrow your PPC campaigns down to only show in the most relevant customer searches.

Without negative keywords you are:

• Wasting your ad spend.
• Losing new opportunities.
• Potentially lowering your product ranking.
• Potentially allowing keyword cannibalization.

Learn your negative keywords from your search term report or an Amazon negative keyword tool. That time saves you from wasting your budget in the future.

When you are just getting started, remember that keywords require testing and tweaking. You can always remove a negative keyword if you decide that it isn't working. The best learning comes from doing.

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