Negative Keyword

A negative keyword is a search term explicitly excluded from bidding in an Amazon PPC campaign or ad group. It is the mirror operation of positive keyword targeting and a non-optional part of running professional PPC — an account without an active negative-keyword workflow is leaking spend by design.

Negatives serve two distinct purposes:

1. Block spend leaks — search terms with high click volume and zero (or near-zero) orders.
2. Prevent harvest cannibalisation — terms already promoted into exact-match campaigns should not continue to spend in the broad-match parent.

Negative match types

Sponsored Products supports two negative match types (there is no Negative Broad):

• Negative Exact — blocks the exact search term and its close variants (plurals, typos). Use for harvested winners (block the exact phrase) and for confirmed unprofitable queries.
• Negative Phrase — blocks any search term containing the negative phrase as a substring. Use to block irrelevant qualifiers ("free", "cheap", "diy") and competitor brand names you don't want to bid on.

Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display additionally support Negative Product Targeting (negative ASIN) — exclude specific competitor ASINs from product-targeted campaigns.

When to add a negative

Three triggers from the Search Term Report:

1. High click, zero order. ≥15 clicks and 0 orders → Negative Exact. This is the primary spend-leak fix.
2. Harvested into exact-match campaign. Add as Negative Exact on the source broad/auto campaign immediately.
3. Brand-mismatch. Your own brand on a competitor-conquest campaign; competitor brands on your branded-defence campaign. Negative Phrase the brand name.

Negation hierarchy: campaign vs. ad group

Negatives can be added at either the campaign level (applies to all ad groups in the campaign) or the ad group level (applies only to that ad group). The rule of thumb:

• Campaign-level negatives for terms that should never trigger in this campaign regardless of which ad group caught them. Example: your own brand name on a competitor conquest campaign.
• Ad-group-level negatives for harvest workflow — the harvested term is negated on its specific source ad group, not on the whole campaign, in case another ad group has a legitimate match.

Most accounts default to campaign-level for simplicity and only step down to ad-group when needed.

Negative lists

Amazon supports Negative Keyword Lists — reusable libraries of negatives that can be applied to many campaigns at once. Worth maintaining at least two:

• Account-wide irrelevants. Words that never make sense for the brand (free, instructions, manual, replacement, for sale used).
• Competitor brand list. All competitor brand names; applied to every campaign that isn't a deliberate competitor conquest.

Maintaining these lists once and reusing them is the difference between an account with 50 negatives across 50 campaigns and an account with 50 negatives propagated everywhere they belong.

Common mistakes

• Never adding negatives. The single most common cause of slowly rising ACOS in a "stable" account. A campaign older than 6 months with fewer than 20 negatives is almost certainly leaking spend.
• Adding broad-form negatives that block too much. Negative Phrase bottle on a water-bottle campaign blocks stainless steel bottle, water bottle, everything. Always test negatives in the Search Term Report's negative-keyword preview before committing.
• Forgetting to negate harvested terms. The most expensive single negation mistake. Set the harvest workflow so the negation step happens in the same session as the promotion to exact-match.
• Negating at the wrong scope. Negative Exact at the campaign level can block legitimate matches in a sister ad group that wanted the term. When in doubt, negate at the ad-group level.