Negate when the query is irrelevant, or when the sample is enough and still does not convert
Negatives exist to stop traffic you clearly should not buy. They are not a switch for every term whose ACOS is temporarily high. Enter the negate queue only if one of these is true.
- The query is clearly irrelevant: wrong category, accessory you do not sell, audience mismatch, or a competitor model you cannot substitute.
- Clicks reached the watch threshold you set for this price, spend is near or past allowable ad cost per unit, and there is still no order.
- The same target keeps buying the same junk query, so the negative has to sit at the match level that can actually block it.
When not to negate: launches, relevant variants, thin samples
- During launch, while reviews and organic rank are still climbing, relevant terms with no order yet should get less budget or tighter match — not a bulk negate.
- Do not negate reasonable brand variants, plurals, or close spellings that still point to your product just because early ACOS is high.
- If clicks are well below the watch threshold, a high ACOS only means the sample is small. Put it on a watch list.
- If you are out of stock or changing the main image or price, pause or fix the listing first. Negatives will not repair the funnel.
Steps: choose the object, then the negative match type
- Sort the Search Term report by spend. Handle irrelevant and high-spend zero-order terms first.
- Confirm campaign, ad group, and targeting so the negative is not added at the wrong level.
- Irrelevant with no useful stem: use exact negative to limit collateral damage.
- A clear junk stem (wrong material, unrelated accessory) that you do not sell: consider phrase negative, then check you will not block good terms.
- If one broad target keeps producing junk, also consider lowering the bid, tightening match, or moving winners into exact ad groups.
- Record the negate date and the next review date. Unrecorded negatives are hard to judge later.
Example: two high-ACOS terms, only one should be negated
The product is a glass coffee cup with lid. “plastic replacement lid” spent $14 on 19 clicks and 0 orders, and you do not sell lids alone → exact negative. “glass coffee mug with lid” spent $12 on 16 clicks and 0 orders, but it is relevant, the main image just changed, and there are only 12 reviews → watch and cut that ad group’s budget instead of negating.
If you also negate the second term, you may not buy that relevant demand back after the listing improves, and you will misread the ACOS drop as a win from negatives.
Risk boundaries: negatives can stop waste or block real demand
- Wide phrase or negative-broad blocks can stop useful long-tail queries that have not shown up in the report yet.
- Negating in one ad group while another still uses a loose target lets junk re-enter.
- Do not negate converting terms still below break-even just to make account ACOS look lower.
- Amazon’s negative match behavior follows the console’s current help text. UI labels can change; this article does not treat them as frozen policy.
List “negate” vs “do not negate” from your Search Term report
Apply relevance, click threshold, and allowable spend to your file and the negate list gets shorter and safer. After you upload the report, you can see which high-spend zero-order terms are junk and which are relevant terms that have not converted yet.