Negative keywords are the single fastest way to improve Amazon PPC performance without touching your bids or budgets. Every week that you run auto or broad match campaigns without reviewing your search terms, you are paying for impressions and clicks from buyers who were never going to purchase your product. This guide covers everything: match types, how to find waste in your account, where to add negatives, and a starter list you can apply to any campaign today.
In our experience managing Amazon PPC accounts across the UK, a first-time negative keyword audit typically reduces wasted spend by 15–25% and lowers ACoS by 3–8 percentage points within 30 days — without reducing sales. The budget freed up gets reallocated to converting search terms.
What Are Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords tell Amazon not to show your ad when a buyer’s search query contains that word or phrase. Without negatives, Amazon’s broad match and auto campaigns will match your ads to loosely related, off-brand, or entirely irrelevant search terms — and charge you for each click.
Example: You sell a premium stainless steel water bottle. Without negatives, Amazon might show your £25 bottle to someone searching for “cheap water bottle”, “plastic water bottle”, or “water bottle kids” — buyers who will not convert at your price point. Each of those clicks costs money and inflates your ACoS.
Negative Keyword Match Types
🚫 Negative Exact Narrow
Blocks your ad only when the buyer’s query is exactly that phrase — same words, same order, no additions. Use for specific irrelevant queries you want to block precisely.
Blocks: “water bottle kids” exactly
Does NOT block: “kids water bottle” or “water bottle for kids”
🚫 Negative Phrase Broad
Blocks your ad whenever the buyer’s query contains that phrase as a sequence of words, regardless of what comes before or after. More powerful — use for broad concepts to eliminate.
Blocks: “water bottle kids”, “kids water bottle cheap”, “pink water bottle kids”
Does NOT block: “kids bottles water”
Start with Negative Phrase for most terms — it blocks more irrelevant traffic with fewer keywords. Use Negative Exact only when you want to block a specific query but keep similar queries. There is no “negative broad match” on Amazon.
Where to Add Negative Keywords
Amazon lets you add negative keywords at two levels — each with a different scope:
| Level | Scope | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign level | Blocks the query across all ad groups in that campaign | Broad irrelevant categories (e.g. “free”, “diy”, competitor brand names you never want to appear for) |
| Ad group level | Blocks the query only within that ad group | Terms that are relevant to other products in your campaign but not to this specific ad group |
Finding Wasted Spend: The Search Term Report Process
The Search Term Report in Seller Central shows every actual query a buyer typed before clicking your ad. This is your primary source for negative keywords.
Download the Search Term Report
Seller Central → Advertising → Campaign Manager → Reports → Search Term. Run it for the past 30–60 days. Download as CSV.
Filter for spend with zero orders
In Excel or Sheets: filter where Spend > £5 AND Orders = 0. Every row is a search term you paid for with no return. Sort by spend descending.
Identify high-ACoS terms
Also filter for terms where ACoS > your target ACoS threshold (e.g. >60%). These generated sales but at unprofitable rates — worth adding as negatives or reducing bids on.
Review for thematic patterns
Look for word patterns — modifiers like “cheap”, “free”, “diy”, “used”, “kids”, competitor brand names, wrong categories. Add the root modifier as a negative phrase to block the whole pattern at once.
Add negatives and document
Add via Campaign Manager → Negative Keywords. Keep a running spreadsheet log of every negative added, with the date and reason. This prevents accidentally removing effective negatives later.
Starter Negative Keyword List
These terms should be considered for negative exact or phrase match in almost any Amazon PPC campaign. Review each against your specific product — some may be relevant to your niche.
Universal Negative Keyword Starters (Negative Phrase)
- free
- cheap
- used
- second hand
- diy
- how to
- what is
- tutorial
- review
- vs
- compared to
- alternative
- wholesale
- bulk buy
- rental
- hire
- ebay
- walmart
- aliexpress
- temu
Using Negatives to Structure Campaigns
Beyond eliminating waste, negative keywords are the mechanism for controlling which campaign captures which traffic — a technique called campaign funnelling:
- Auto campaign → Exact campaign funnelling: Run an auto campaign to discover converting search terms. When you find a winning term, add it as an exact match to a dedicated exact campaign, and add it as a negative exact in the auto campaign. Now the auto campaign hunts for new terms, and the exact campaign captures known converters at controlled bids.
- Broad campaign → Phrase campaign: Same principle — use broad to find terms, move converting terms to phrase, add as negative phrase to broad.
- Defensive negatives: Add your own brand name as a negative to non-brand campaigns to prevent brand searches from triggering generic campaigns (where you would pay a higher bid for traffic that would have converted anyway).
Negative keywords compound over time. An account that has been actively managed for 12 months with weekly negative reviews will have a significantly cleaner search term profile than a fresh account — lower ACoS, higher conversion rates, and more budget available for genuinely relevant traffic. This is one of the most durable advantages of sustained PPC management.
Negative Keywords for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display
- Sponsored Brands: Negative keywords work identically to Sponsored Products. Apply the same search term review process weekly.
- Sponsored Display: SD uses audiences and product targeting rather than keyword targeting, so traditional negative keywords do not apply. Instead, use negative product targeting to exclude specific ASINs or categories from your SD campaigns.
Want Your Campaigns Audited for Wasted Spend?
We run a full search term analysis across your entire account and show you exactly where your budget is leaking — at no cost, no obligation.