Amazon Search Term Report: How to Find Hidden Opportunities & Reduce ACOS

Your Amazon ad campaigns aren’t performing as well as you’d like. You’re spending money, but you’re not seeing the sales to justify it. You’ve probably heard that you need to analyze your search term reports, but you’re not sure where to start or what to look for.

This is a common problem for Amazon sellers, especially those managing multiple campaigns. Most sellers don’t realize the wealth of information hidden within these reports. In this article, we’ll show you how to use Amazon’s search term reports to identify hidden opportunities, reduce your ACOS, and boost your overall campaign performance. Let’s dive in.

What is an Amazon Search Term Report?

Let me break this down. Amazon search term reports show you the exact search queries customers used that led to clicks and sales on your ads. This is different from the keywords you’re targeting. These reports reveal the actual searches people are typing into Amazon.

Here’s why that matters: You might be bidding on a broad keyword like “coffee mug,” but the search term report will show you whether people are searching for “funny coffee mug for dad,” “large coffee mug with handle,” or something else entirely.

Why are Search Term Reports Important?

Most sellers aren’t taking advantage of this. Search term reports are your direct line to customer intent. They provide insights you simply can’t get anywhere else.

Here’s what you can learn:

• Identify high-converting search terms: Find the exact searches driving sales at a low ACOS.
• Discover irrelevant search terms: Identify searches that are costing you money but not converting.
• Uncover new keyword opportunities: Find related keywords you aren’t currently targeting.
• Improve your product listings: Use the language customers are using to optimize your titles and bullet points.

How to Download Your Amazon Search Term Report

First, you need to download the report. Here’s how:

1. Log in to your Amazon Seller Central account.
2. Navigate to “Advertising” and then “Campaign Manager.”
3. Click on “Reports” in the left-hand menu.
4. Select “Sponsored Products” as the campaign type.
5. Choose “Search Term” as the report type.
6. Set the report duration (we recommend at least 30 days).
7. Click “Create report.”
8. Download the report once it’s ready.

The reality is, you should be downloading this report regularly. Aim for at least once a week to stay on top of your campaign performance.

Analyzing Your Amazon Search Term Report: Finding Opportunities

Once you’ve downloaded the report, it’s time to analyze the data. This is where the magic happens.

Identify High-Converting Search Terms

Look for search terms with a high conversion rate (orders divided by clicks) and a low ACOS. These are your winners!

Let’s look at a real example: You’re selling phone cases. You find that the search term “clear iPhone 13 case” has a 5% conversion rate and a 15% ACOS.

Here’s how to take action:

• Add this search term as an exact match keyword to your campaigns.
• Increase your bid for this keyword to capture more impressions.
• Include this search term in your product listing to improve organic ranking.

This simple step can significantly boost your sales and lower your overall ACOS.

Negate Irrelevant Search Terms

This is just as important as finding winners. Look for search terms with a high number of clicks but no sales. These are costing you money and dragging down your ACOS.

For instance, you’re selling dog toys, and you see the search term “dog food” has generated 50 clicks but zero sales.

Here’s how to fix it:

• Add “dog food” as a negative keyword to your campaigns.
• Use phrase or exact match negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for these irrelevant searches.

Most sellers don’t realize how much money they’re wasting on irrelevant search terms. Regularly negating these terms can save you a significant amount of ad spend.

Discover New Keyword Opportunities

Your search term report can also reveal new keyword ideas you haven’t considered. Look for related search terms that are generating clicks and sales, even if they aren’t performing as well as your top winners.

Example: You’re selling protein powder. You notice the search term “vegan protein powder for women” is generating some sales, even though you aren’t specifically targeting it.

Here’s what to do:

• Add “vegan protein powder for women” as a keyword to your campaigns.
• Create a separate ad group specifically targeting this niche.
• Tailor your ad copy to appeal to this specific audience.

This allows you to expand your reach and capture new customers you might have otherwise missed.

Automating Your Search Term Report Analysis

Analyzing search term reports manually can be time-consuming, especially if you have a large number of campaigns.

That’s where tools like AdLabs come in. AdLabs calculates the process of analyzing your search term reports, identifying high-converting and irrelevant search terms, and suggesting optimizations.

Here’s what one AdLabs user, Scott H., said: “AdLabs is by far the best… TACOS is down significantly while sales are now happening across our entire catalog.” [Trustpilot review]

The Power of Search Term Reports

Here’s the thing: Amazon search term reports are a goldmine of information that most sellers ignore. By taking the time to analyze these reports, you can identify hidden opportunities, reduce your ACOS, and boost your overall campaign performance.

Start downloading and analyzing your search term reports today. You might be surprised at what you discover.

Key Discussion Points from the Episode

Here are some of the most valuable insights Andrew and Stephen shared during the full episode discussion:

But yeah, Andrew, why don’t we, why don’t we transition now? So that’s, that’s kind of just a brief introduction to the report, or maybe not so brief, but let’s transition over to how people can actually use this report to enhance their performance with their advertising. Yes, Stephen, So we are going to talk about how this search term report can drastically enhance your advertising, how you can use it in your day to day management practices to provide better performance, provide good management to grow your account, scale your campaigns and find new keywords and new targets to improve your performance.

So first things first, the main way that you’re probably going to be using search term reports is for keyword research and keyword harvesting. A big part of some of the strategies that we deploy with broad match and phrase match or expanded product targeting are with the intent of finding new keywords that our product converts on and finding new keywords where our product is relevant. So that’s why we talked about the delineation between targets and search terms.

Because sometimes you’re targeting things and showing up on searches that you’re not explicitly targeting but are maybe similar to that keyword that you’re targeting. So we use this to find out which long tail keywords we’re actually showing up on. What’s so funny?

I was just thinking of the. I thought back to when you were laughing at the running shoes for toddlers. I was about to throw that example again, like maybe you’re selling running shoes for adults.

You see, all the search terms are running shoes for toddlers, driving up a ton of spend and not driving any sales for you. So that would be a good discovery of an irrelevant search term that you would want to clean up. Yeah, yeah.

You’ll find that nobody is searching for running shoes for toddlers because toddlers can barely walk, let alone go for a run.

Yeah, that sits about right. I, that feels right to me just based on what I’ve looked at. I don’t, I don’t know, like across all accounts and stuff.

But yeah, that feels right. So one other thing that’s in here Andrew, is there is a conversion rate column which is nice because Amazon doesn’t, doesn’t often or at least not in the campaign manager they don’t give us those conversion rates. But throwing you on the hot seat, how do you think Amazon is calculating that conversion rate?

Is it number of orders over clicks or is it number of units over clicks? Oh, in the report itself. I’m gonna.

This article is based on Episode 18 of That Amazon Ads Podcast. Subscribe for weekly Amazon PPC strategies.