How do I find the keywords bleeding money in my Amazon campaigns?
Money-bleeding keywords are found in the Search Term report with two evidence rules: enough clicks to judge (15+ — below that, zero orders is often just luck), and a settled window (ending 7+ days back, because Amazon attributes sales late). Across accounts on AIAdKing, terms already past both bars — proven wasters — hold about 10% of all search-term spend. Block those; leave the merely-unlucky alone.
The reasons, most common first
Judging on too few clicks
A keyword with 4 clicks and no orders isn't guilty — at typical conversion rates, that's an expected outcome for a perfectly good keyword. Negating on thin data trims winners along with losers.
Judging on unsettled days
Fresh windows undercount sales (7-day attribution). A term "wasting" money this week may simply be waiting for its sales to land.
Never looking at search terms at all
The keyword you bid on and the search that triggered it are different things. Broad/auto targeting means the real spenders are searches you've never read.
How to check it yourself
The manual evidence pass:
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1
Download the Search Term report for a 30-day window ending 7+ days ago.
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2
Aggregate by search term (the same term hits multiple campaigns).
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3
Filter: 15+ clicks AND zero orders → negative-exact list, per campaign where it spends.
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4
Second pass: terms whose cost-per-order exceeds your break-even — bid down before negating; they convert, just too expensively.
The 10% that buys nothing
On ₹50,000/month of search-term spend, the typical proven-waster share is ~₹5,000/month — ₹60,000/year — spent on searches that have already proven, with statistically sufficient clicks, that they don't buy your product.
How AIAdKing handles this for you
AIAdKing's daily cycle runs this exact discipline: aggregates terms across campaigns, waits for the 15-click evidence floor, judges only settled windows, prefers bid-downs over negation when a term converts but too expensively, and shows every action with its evidence — the term, the clicks, the spend it was eating — so you can audit any decision.
Sellers also ask
Negative exact or negative phrase? +
Negative exact for a specific proven-waster search; negative phrase only when every search containing that phrase is irrelevant (risky — it blocks unseen future terms). When unsure, exact.
Can negating hurt my campaigns? +
Over-negating on thin evidence can strangle discovery and block terms that would have converted. That's why the click floor matters more than enthusiasm — evidence first, then block.
How often should I harvest negatives? +
Weekly is plenty manually (the report needs settled data anyway). Daily automation adds value mainly through consistency and cross-campaign aggregation, not speed.