Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are terms you explicitly exclude from your PPC campaigns to prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant searches, reducing wasted spend and improving ACoS.
What is Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords tell Amazon (or Google) not to show your ad when a search query contains a specific term. On Amazon, they can be set at campaign or ad group level, as negative exact (blocks only that exact phrase) or negative phrase (blocks any search containing that phrase). A yoga mat brand might add 'towel' as a negative keyword after discovering spend on 'yoga towel' searches that never convert.
Negative keyword management is one of the most consistently overlooked optimisations in Amazon PPC. New sellers focus on finding good keywords to bid on; experienced sellers know that eliminating irrelevant spend is equally valuable — and often faster to implement. A campaign generating $1,000/week in spend with 30% wasted on irrelevant terms can immediately improve ACoS by adding the right negatives.
For Google Shopping campaigns, negative keywords work identically but with slightly different match type mechanics. Since Shopping doesn't let you bid on specific keywords (bids are based on the product feed), negatives are the primary targeting control mechanism — essential for avoiding unrelated product category traffic.
Why it matters for sellers
Every dollar spent on an irrelevant click is a dollar that earned zero return. At a 2% CTR and $1.20 CPC, 100 irrelevant impressions cost $2.40 with zero sales potential. Multiply across thousands of irrelevant search terms and the waste is significant. Most new accounts have 20–40% wasted spend that negatives can eliminate without reducing impressions on relevant terms.
How to use Negative Keywords
Download your Search Term Report weekly. Sort by spend descending. Any term with 5+ clicks and zero sales is a candidate for negative exact keyword. Any term that is clearly unrelated to your product (wrong category, competitor brand name — if you're not doing competitor targeting — or unrelated use case) should be negated immediately.
Build a 'master negative list' of terms that will never be relevant to your product and apply them to all campaigns at launch. For a premium product, add 'cheap', 'budget', 'free', and 'DIY' as negatives. For a children's product, add 'adult' or category-inappropriate modifiers.
Real-world example
A seller runs Sponsored Products for 'leather wallet'. Search Term Report reveals $340 in spend on 'vegan leather wallet' over 30 days — zero sales, because their product is genuine leather. They add 'vegan' as negative phrase. ACoS drops from 38% to 26% in the following month with no other changes. That $340 now funds additional bids on 'genuine leather wallet' which converts at 14%.
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Frequently asked questions about Negative Keywords
What is the difference between negative exact and negative phrase on Amazon?
Negative exact blocks only that precise search term. Negative phrase blocks any search containing that phrase anywhere within it. If you add 'used' as negative phrase, you'd block 'used yoga mat', 'yoga mat used', and 'barely used yoga mat'. Use negative phrase for modifiers you never want; negative exact for specific competitor names or terms you want to block only when used alone.
Should I add competitor brand names as negatives?
Only if you're not intentionally targeting competitors. If you're running broad match and competitor names are appearing in your search terms report but not converting, negative them. If you deliberately want to target competitor keywords (a common strategy), do it in a separate campaign with its own budget rather than letting broad match accidentally show you there.
How many negative keywords should I have?
There's no target number — add negatives when you have evidence (spend + zero conversions) that a term is wasting budget. A mature account might have 200–500 negative keywords accumulated over years. A new account should build this list from its Search Term Report data rather than adding negatives speculatively before seeing actual search term data.