Picture this: you’re selling premium leather handbags, and you’ve just spent £200 on advertising… only to discover that half your clicks came from people searching for “cheap plastic bags” and “free shopping bags.” Your budget’s gone, your ACoS is astronomical, and you haven’t made a single sale from those clicks.
This is exactly why negative keywords exist, and why they’re possibly the most underutilised tool in Amazon PPC. Whilst most sellers obsess over which keywords to target, the really savvy ones spend equal time deciding which searches to avoid.
What Are Negative Keywords on Amazon?
Amazon negative keywords are terms you explicitly tell Amazon not to show your ads for. They’re the searches you want to exclude because they’re irrelevant, unprofitable, or attract the wrong type of customer.
Think of them as bouncers at an exclusive club. Your regular keywords are the guest list – people you want to attract. Negative keywords are the people you’re specifically keeping out because they’re not a good fit, even if they might be interested in something vaguely related to what you’re offering.
For instance, if you sell professional-grade camera equipment, you might add “toy,” “kids,” “cheap,” and “disposable” as negative keywords. Sure, someone searching for “cheap toy camera for kids” is technically looking for a camera, but they’re absolutely not your customer. Why waste money showing them an ad for your £800 mirrorless camera body?
Why Negative Keywords Matter More Than Ever
Amazon’s advertising landscape has become increasingly competitive (and expensive) in 2025. Average cost-per-click rates have climbed steadily, which means every wasted click hurts your bottom line more than it did a few years ago.
Without negative keywords, broad and phrase match campaigns bleed budget on irrelevant searches. We’ve audited accounts where 40% or more of ad spend went to search terms that never converted – not because the ads were poor, but because the searches were fundamentally mismatched with the product.
Negative keywords also improve your overall campaign health by boosting your conversion rate. When you filter out low-intent searches, a higher percentage of people who click your ads actually buy. Amazon’s algorithm notices this and rewards well-performing campaigns with better ad placements and sometimes even lower CPCs.
Types of Negative Keywords (and When to Use Each)
Amazon offers two types of negative keywords, mirroring the match types available for regular keywords:
Negative Phrase Match
When you add a negative phrase match keyword (let’s say “for kids”), your ad won’t show for any search containing that exact phrase in that order. So “water bottles for kids” and “lunch boxes for kids” would both be blocked, but “kids water bottles” might still trigger your ad because the phrase order is different.
Negative phrase match is useful when there’s a specific phrase that consistently indicates irrelevant traffic but you don’t want to be overly restrictive.
Negative Exact Match
Negative exact match only blocks the precise search term you specify. If you add “toy camera” as a negative exact match, that specific search is blocked – but “kids toy camera” or “toy cameras” could still trigger your ads.
This is helpful when you want surgical precision, perhaps blocking a single problematic search term without affecting related searches that might actually be relevant.
In most cases, negative phrase match gives you more bang for your buck because it casts a wider (but still controlled) net. However, there are situations where you’ll want the precision of negative exact match to avoid blocking good traffic accidentally.
How to Find Negative Keywords on Amazon
Right, so how do you actually identify which terms deserve the negative keyword treatment? Here’s where the detective work begins.
Search Term Reports
Your Search Term Report (found in your Amazon Advertising console under Campaign Manager > Reports) shows every search query that triggered your ads. This is ground zero for negative keyword research.
Export this report regularly (we’d suggest weekly for active campaigns) and analyse it with a critical eye. Look for:
- Search terms with clicks but zero sales
- Terms with decent clicks but conversion rates well below your campaign average
- Obviously irrelevant searches that somehow triggered your ads
- Searches containing words like “cheap,” “free,” “used,” or “rental” if you sell new premium products
- Competitor brand names (more on this in a moment)
- Searches clearly looking for a different product category altogether
Sort by spend to identify your most expensive losers first. A search term that cost you £50 with no conversions deserves immediate attention.
Look for Patterns, Not Just Individual Terms
Don’t just add individual bad search terms as negatives – look for common threads. If you keep seeing irrelevant searches containing “DIY,” “homemade,” or “tutorial,” you might want to add these as negative phrase matches rather than playing whack-a-mole with individual search terms.
Similarly, if you sell adult products and keep getting searches with “kids,” “children,” “toddler,” and “baby,” you’ll want all of these as negatives. Create a comprehensive list rather than reacting one term at a time.
Consider Customer Intent Signals
Certain words signal low purchase intent or bargain-hunting behaviour. Terms like:
- “cheap,” “cheapest,” “budget,” “affordable”
- “free,” “free shipping,” “discount”
- “reviews,” “comparison,” “vs”
- “how to,” “DIY,” “tutorial”
These aren’t universally bad (someone searching “affordable quality headphones” might still convert), but they often indicate early research phase or extreme price sensitivity. If your margins are tight, you might want to negative out some of these intent signals.
How to Use Negative Keywords on Amazon
Adding negative keywords is straightforward once you know where to look:
Campaign Level: Navigate to your campaign in Campaign Manager, click the “Negative keywords” tab, and add your terms there. Campaign-level negatives apply to every ad group within that campaign.
Ad Group Level: For more granular control, add negatives at the ad group level. This is useful when different ad groups target different customer segments or product variations.
Our recommendation? Start with campaign-level negatives for obviously irrelevant terms (wrong product category, competitor brands, etc.). Then use ad group-level negatives for more nuanced filtering based on the specific products in each ad group.
Don’t Forget Auto Campaigns
Your automatic campaigns often generate the most surprising (and sometimes horrifying) search terms because Amazon’s algorithm is exploring broadly. These campaigns desperately need negative keyword management. Harvest bad terms from auto campaigns and add them as negatives to prevent continued waste.
Common Negative Keyword Mistakes
Being Too Aggressive Too Quickly
We’ve seen sellers get overzealous and block terms that seemed irrelevant but actually had potential. A search term with 5 clicks and no sales yet isn’t necessarily bad – it might just need more time. Look for statistical significance (at least 20-30 clicks) before making judgements.
Forgetting About Negatives When Scaling
As you expand campaigns or create new ones, remember to apply your negative keyword learnings. Many sellers build robust negative lists for existing campaigns but forget to add them to new campaigns, forcing them to learn the same expensive lessons twice.
Blocking Your Own Brand Name
This seems obvious, but we’ve seen it happen. Double-check that you’re not accidentally blocking searches for your own products or brand name. This usually happens when sellers bulk-add negatives without careful review.
Building Your Master Negative List
Smart sellers maintain a master negative keyword list that evolves over time. This document captures all your hard-won insights about what doesn’t work for your products.
Categorise your negatives logically:
- Wrong product type
- Wrong customer segment (kids, commercial, industrial, etc.)
- Low-intent research terms
- Price-sensitive language
- Competitor brands
When launching new campaigns, you can quickly apply relevant negatives from your master list rather than starting from scratch each time. This dramatically accelerates campaign maturity and reduces wasteful spending in those crucial early days.
The Ongoing Process
Negative keyword management isn’t a one-time task – it’s an ongoing discipline. As new products launch, customer language evolves, and competitors shift, new irrelevant searches will emerge.
Set a calendar reminder to review your Search Term Report weekly (or at least biweekly for smaller accounts). Make negative keyword optimisation part of your regular campaign maintenance, just like bid adjustments and budget allocation.
The cumulative effect of consistent negative keyword refinement is substantial. Over months and years, you build increasingly efficient campaigns that spend money only on genuinely promising searches.
Take Control of Your PPC Spend
Mastering Amazon negative keywords is one of the highest-ROI activities in PPC management. It costs you nothing except time, yet can easily reduce wasted spend by 20-40% whilst simultaneously improving your conversion rates and campaign performance metrics.
If you’re tired of watching your budget disappear on irrelevant clicks, or you simply don’t have time to regularly optimise your campaigns, we can help. Our team provides full-service Amazon account support including expert PPC management, negative keyword optimisation, and comprehensive campaign strategy – so get in touch with us today and find out how we can help you help your business.
