An Introduction to the Amazon Search Term Report

In the hyper-competitive world of Amazon Advertising, harnessing the right data can mean the difference between ad spend well-invested or ad spend wasted. The longest-standing and most useful tool to improve performance is the Amazon Search Term Report, a report that reveals which search queries drive clicks and conversions for your Amazon ads. By using this report, you can find new keywords and targets, cut unnecessary costs, and improve overall campaign performance.

What is the Amazon search term report?

The Amazon Search Term Report is a downloadable Excel file from the Amazon Advertising console, revealing the exact search queries shoppers used before clicking on your ads as well as their performance. This information allows you to see:

1. Which keywords triggered your ads to appear
2. How often those terms led to conversions or sales
3. Cost metrics like Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Advertising Cost of Sales (ACoS)

By analyzing these search terms, you can uncover hidden opportunities — terms you never thought to bid on — and also identify irrelevant keywords that drive up costs without converting.

Why the search term report matters for Amazon ads

When optimizing Amazon ads, it’s crucial to align your targeted keywords with the terms your audience actually uses. The Amazon Search Term Report offers incredible insight into your customers’ thought processes and buying intentions.

By frequently reviewing the data, you can:

• Improve ad relevance: Increased spend on terms that consistently lead to clicks and conversions
• Cut wasted spend: Identify high-cost, low-performance terms and exclude them as negative keywords
• Discover profitable niches: Pinpoint new keywords that convert well and boost your sales potential

What ad types can you use the search term report for?

Before diving into how the Amazon Search Term Report can help improve your campaign performance, let’s establish what types of ads you can use it for.

Amazon offers various ad types — Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display —that help place products in front of potential buyers. Of these, only two offer a search term report.

• Sponsored Products: Yes, both keywords and targets. This includes the search terms entered by customers that resulted in at least one click on your ad. Available for summary or daily view with a lookback of up to 65 days.
• Sponsored Brands: Yes, both keywords and targets. This includes the search terms entered by customers that resulted in at least one click on your ad. Available for summary or daily view with a lookback of up to 65 days.
• Sponsored Display: Not Available

As of this writing there is no option to download a search term report for Sponsored Display which means you are limited to using this report for Sponsored products and Sponsored brand campaigns.

How to download the Amazon search term report

1. Log in to your Amazon Advertising account and go the sponsored ad reports
2. Select “Create Report”
3. Choose Search term report (this should be the default)
4. Pick “Summary” as your time unit.
5. Choose your report period
6. Name the report and add any email recipients
7. Choose now
8. Run the report, wait for it to be ready and then download

How to read the search term report

The search term report will download as an Excel file with, hopefully, a lot of data. There will be lots of columns and lots of rows, and many things may be unclear.

Everything at the beginning of the report, though, should be straightforward. It will include the dates the campaigns have been running and the names of campaigns, ad groups, portfolios, etc. This is all basic information. Hopefully, you’ve set up your campaign structure and did a good job designing your campaign names to make all of this easy to understand.

After the basic info, we have the targeting info, match type and the resulting search term. Most of these will be words but you will also see ASIN and Category targets as well.

After that will be the data you’ll use to make decisions.

Key metrics to watch

These metrics are what you’ll want to look out for:

• Impressions – Times your ad was displayed. A good indication of search volume and bid competitiveness
• Clicks – Engaged user interactions. A measure of sample size (how reliable your data is). The more clicks, the more reliable your data.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate) – High CTR indicates relevant targeting. If your CTR is low then you may need to optimize your main image or write a new listing title.
• CPC (Cost Per Click) – This is an average and will help you determine where you want to set your bid.
• ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) – Reflects how cost-effective your ads are at generating revenue.
• Conversion Rate – One of the most important metrics that shows how relevant you are for the buyers intent. If you feel that you should convert better then you may need to consider optimizing your listing to increase conversion rate.

Why do the search term reports say “7day”, “14day”, etc?

This can be a little confusing at first until you get used to it. What this is referring to is the “attribution window”. The attribution window is simply the length of time to assign a sale to a click.

For example, 7-day total sales refers to the total sales that occurred within the 7 days following the date the ad was clicked.

Attribution window is an important concept in Amazon Advertising as it shows the importance of understanding buyer behavior and the impact of advertising on it. Most importantly, people don’t always buy the moment they click your ad. Sometimes they add to cart, sometimes they think about it for a while. Sometimes they need to click on some more of your ads. 🙂

You can read the definitions of each column in the Amazon Documentation here.

What is “Other SKU Sales”?

Another important factor when thinking about your ads and how they perform is that even though you advertise one item, the person may buy another one of your items. Amazon reports these as:

• Advertised SKU: A sale for the SKU you are trying to advertise
• Other SKU Sales: A sale for any other SKU you sell that came after a customer clicked on this ad.

This is most relevant when you have multi-packs and color/size variations. It’s important to realize that your ad may not just drive sales to that specific product but may also be useful for driving sales to other products you sell.

Some search terms (like in row 2) even drive more “other SKU sales” than advertised SKU sales. This could be a good indication to consider the search term and advertising the other SKU with it. Just remember, sample size matters – this could just be noise.

Another important consideration when reading the data: Last Click Attribution

When reading all the data above you need to remember that Amazon is only attributing sales to the last ad that was clicked on. Even if the customer clicked on several ads before buying. For this reason, it may appear that some ads are underperforming even though they are actually very important.

Best practices for optimizing campaigns with the search term report

Now that you understand what you’re looking at, we can get to optimizing. Here are some tactics you can use:

1. mplement Negative Keywords: If certain terms yield no conversions yet rack up clicks, exclude them as negative keywords.
   1. WARNING: You need to be careful and understand the potential impact of negative keywords. I’ve heard stories of people negative keywording a misspelling that was not converting which then (unknowingly) killed all the ads for their main term…in Q4, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost sales. Be careful.
2. Refine Match Types: Mix exact match for targeted control and broad match for discovering new keyword variations.
3. Harvest New Keywords: When you see search terms that are performing well but you are not advertising on you can create new campaigns or add them to existing campaigns with dedicated spend.
4. Adjust Bids: Boost bids for your top converters, reduce for underperformers, and observe how it affects ROI.
5. Analyze Regularly: Weekly or bi-weekly checks help you stay on top of shifting consumer trends.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

While it may seem straightforward, there are a lot of potential mistakes that can be made here.

• Reading the data incorrectly: Hopefully we’ve explained this well enough above but it’s vitally important for you to understand what you’re looking at and the language Amazon speak in order to make good decisions from this data.
• Ignoring Long-Tail Opportunities: These lower-volume phrases might not seem interesting but when built up over time can yield higher conversions and lower costs overall. Importantly, these items will have lower sample sizes so will not show high up on your report when you sort it.
• Overuse of Broad Match: Too broad a net can result in irrelevant clicks. When harvesting keywords, be intentional with the terms and match types you are launching campaigns with. You’ll see this in the data if the same search term keeps showing up in multiple ads.
• Failing to Track Over Time: A single snapshot won’t reveal trends or seasonal shifts and some data may need longer timeframes to show results than the 65 days Amazon will show you.
• Over-Reliance on Automation: Automated tools are helpful, but human analysis of search terms often uncovers nuances that algorithms miss.

Key takeaways

The Amazon Search Term Report grants unparalleled insight into the precise search phrases your audience uses. By focusing on high-conversion keywords, employing negative keyword strategies, and adjusting bids based on performance, you’ll stretch your budget and increase sales potential.

• Always keep a close eye on real shopper queries.
• Regularly refine your campaigns using actionable insights.
• With a thoughtful approach, the Amazon Search Term Report can significantly enhance your overall Amazon Advertising success.