The Amazon Search Term Report is an advertising analytics export that lists the exact customer queries that triggered your Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads — along with impressions, clicks, spend, and attributed sales for each query. It is the primary source of new keyword ideas and the fastest way to find wasted ad spend.
How the Search Term Report Works
- In the Amazon Ads console, open Measurement & Reporting → Reports.
- Choose report type “Sponsored Products” and report category “Search term”.
- Set a date range — reports are available for the trailing 65 days at most.
- Download the CSV. Each row = one customer query for one ad group.
- Sort by spend, ACoS, or conversions to find harvest candidates (high-converting queries to promote to exact-match) and negative candidates (spending with no sales).
Key Columns and How to Use Them
| Column | What It Means | How to Act on It |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Search Term | The actual query typed by the shopper | The source of every new keyword idea |
| Impressions | How many times an ad showed for that query | Low impressions = weak relevance or low bid |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | Clicks ÷ impressions | Below 0.3% is usually poor relevance or bad creative |
| Cost Per Click (CPC) | Spend ÷ clicks | Compare to category benchmarks and your target ACoS |
| 7-Day Total Sales | Attributed revenue in the 7 days after the click | The conversion signal — zero here after 15+ clicks = negate |
| ACoS | Ad spend ÷ ad sales | The core efficiency metric — decides promote vs. negate |
The Weekly Search Term Report Workflow
- Pull the trailing 30 days of Sponsored Products search-term data.
- Harvest: any query with 3+ sales and ACoS below target → promote to a manual exact-match campaign.
- Negate: any query with 15+ clicks and zero sales → add as a negative exact keyword.
- Investigate: high spend + low CTR → review match type and bid; the ad is probably showing for irrelevant queries.
- Repeat weekly. This loop is the single biggest driver of PPC efficiency for most accounts.
How SellerSonar Helps
- The Keyword Rank Tracker monitors the organic position of the winning search terms harvested from your reports.
- Ranking Alerts fire the moment a promoted keyword loses ground so PPC and SEO stay aligned.
Start your free SellerSonar trial today.
Related Terms
- Sponsored Products — the ad format whose queries appear in the report
- ACoS — the ratio the report is used to optimize
- Backend Keywords — where high-converting search terms belong when they are not indexed by the visible copy