When you set up an ad-campaign for an Amazon Sponsored Product, the first thing you need to do is input some product relevant 'Keywords' and a bid, so that your ad can show up on search results. Once the data starts flowing in, the results can be confusing if you don't know what everything means. Keep reading to learn how to interpret the resulting information from your Keywords!

Keywords are what you use in your campaigns to determine on which searches you want your ad to appear. Search Terms are what the customer actually types into the search bar when they search for a product. You can think of Keywords as the 'bait' you are fishing with, and the 'Search Terms' as the fish you are trying to catch with a specialized bait. 

Each Keyword will have a match type: Broad, Phrase, or Exact. This will change how loosely the customer's Search Term can match your Keyword and still qualify. For example, if you bid on a Phrase match type Keyword "Apple Slicer", a customer can search for "Yellow Apple Slicer", "Big Apple Slicer" "Apple Slicer Set", etc and the original "Apple Slicer" Phrase Match Keyword will qualify. This means that a single Keyword can generate a number of different resulting Search Terms, especially on Phrase and Broad match type Keywords. (Learn more about match types and other Amazon PPC workings in our blog, "Amazon PPC: Your Guide to Sponsored Advertising")

If you see Search Terms with bad results, you can of course just find the Keyword that generated these terms and get rid of it, but you may not want to do this in all cases. For example, a broad match type Keyword may have 10 corresponding Search Terms. If only one or two of these resulting terms are not profitable, you won't want to get rid of the whole Keyword, since there are 8 other terms that may still be profitable. In a case like this, you could set an Exact Negative Keyword for the campaign directly from the Search Terms that are not profitable, so that the Keyword can still run on the other 8 terms. In the Advertising Center, you can do this from the Search Terms tab if you click the three black dots on the left side.