Search Term (Customer Search Term)

A search term (Amazon's preferred phrasing is Customer Search Term) is the literal phrase a shopper typed into Amazon's search box that triggered one of your ads. It is what the shopper actually did — distinct from a keyword, which is what you bid on.

The distinction matters because almost every PPC decision worth making is made on search terms (harvest, negate, diagnose), while almost every bid is set on keywords. Conflating the two produces directly bad outcomes.

How a search term gets matched

When a shopper types a query, Amazon evaluates every keyword in every campaign that could match the query under the rules of the keyword's match type:

• Broad keywords match queries containing the keyword's tokens in any order plus synonyms.
• Phrase keywords match queries containing the keyword's tokens in order.
• Exact keywords match queries that are the keyword (or very close variants).

The shopper's query is the search term; the keyword that "won" the right to enter the auction is the keyword reported alongside it in the Search Term Report.

One keyword, many search terms

A single broad-match keyword routinely matches dozens of unique search terms in a week. Bid keyword: stainless steel water bottle (broad). Search terms matched in a single week might include:

• stainless steel water bottle
• steel water bottle
• stainless steel water bottles for kids
• insulated steel water bottle 1L
• metal water bottle stainless
• vacuum sealed stainless bottle
• bpa free steel water bottle
• ... and 30 more

Each row in the STR is a search term + the keyword that matched it. The keyword side of the row is small; the search term side is where the action is.

What search terms are used for

Three workflows, all run against the Search Term Report:

1. Harvest. Search terms with ≥3 orders and ACOS ≤ Target ACOS × 1.2 → promote to exact-match in a dedicated campaign.
2. Negate. Search terms with ≥15 clicks and 0 orders → add as Negative Exact.
3. Diagnose. Aggregate search terms by theme to see where the campaign is actually spending vs. where you intended it to spend.

Search term aggregation

Amazon will occasionally report a search term as * (asterisk) when the underlying query is below their privacy threshold. These rows are real spend on real queries; you just can't see the queries individually. Treat them as a single bucket and accept the opacity — there's no workaround.

Search terms vs. Search Query Performance

The Search Term Report (STR) is paid-only and shows queries that triggered your ads. The Search Query Performance report in Brand Analytics is paid + organic and shows top queries driving traffic to your ASIN from any source — with funnel-level data (impressions, clicks, adds-to-cart, purchases) and your brand's share vs. the category total.

The STR drives bid decisions; SQP drives listing and category-positioning decisions. Both are necessary; neither substitutes for the other.

Common mistakes

• Saying "keyword" when you mean "search term." The two are different and the analysis is different.
• Bidding on search terms. You can't — you can only bid on keywords. Search terms are observed, not targeted.
• Ignoring * rows. They're often 10–30% of total spend. Worth understanding their proportional drift even if individual rows are opaque.
• Pulling the STR but not the SQP. STR shows the micro; SQP shows the macro. The two together are an order of magnitude more useful than either alone.