A negative phrase also blocks the searches you have not seen yet

Negative exact stops your ad on one search and its close variants, such as the plural. Negative phrase stops it on every search containing the words in that order, including searches nobody has typed yet. Use exact when one search is wrong and its neighbors sell. Use phrase when the wording is unwanted in every search that could contain it.

An exact negative is a decision about one search. A phrase negative is a decision about every search that will ever contain those words.

What each one blocks

Amazon's guide to negative targeting says that with negative phrase, ads won't show on shopping queries that contain the complete phrase or close variations, and with negative exact, on "the exact phrase or close variation". Its definition of exact match is the whole search: the shopper searching for the keyword as the shopperprecisely as entered, and phrase match as the words in the exact order, with other words allowed before or after. For a seller of 32 oz water bottles:

The phrase negative is the one Amazon's wording clearly extends to longer searches, such asstainless water bottle lid replacement and next month's other versions, and it still misses a search with the same two words the other way round. For exact, the wording is less settled: the negative guide says "contain the exact phrase", while exact match is the search as entered, and Vendlen's documentation describes Negative Exact as blocking the query you name. Use exact for the search you name, and do not count on it to block, or to spare, a longer search that contains it.

Exact is a family of spellings, not one

Several guides say negative exact blocks only the identical search. Amazon's negative guide says it also covers close variations, and its general guide says exact match keywords "must match the search query exactly or have very close variations". Its Sponsored Brands guide for authors gives the plural as the example: "classic novel" matches "classic novels". So an exact negative on water bottle lids can stop your ad on water bottle lid.

That matters most when you check whether a search is already blocked. Search your negatives for the exact text of the search, find nothing, and you can add a second negative for a search the first one already covers, or conclude a search is unblocked when it is not. Vendlen compares an exact negative with a search term the way Amazon describes close variants rather than character by character: it ignores accents and punctuation, a trailing plural s and a short list of words such as for, with and the. It does not reorder words, and no outside model can claim to reproduce every variation Amazon counts as close.

What a phrase negative costs, counted

The water bottle seller sees shoppers looking for spare lids. Four searches over the last 60 days contain lid or replacement. The bottle sells for $30 and clicks cost $0.90:

Searches 1 and 2 are shoppers who already own a bottle and want a lid. Searches 3 and 4 are shoppers who want a bottle. Here is what each choice of negative takes out:

The one-word phrases look tidy and cost real orders. lid removes $112.50 of spend and the $180 of ad sales from the straw-lid bottle buyers. replacement removes the shopper replacing a whole bottle, three orders and $90. Both exact negatives remove the same $58.50 as the two two-word phrases, with nothing lost. The difference between those last two rows shows up later: the phrases are written to catch stainless water bottle lid replacement when it appears, and Amazon's wording does not settle whether the exact negatives would, so plan as if they would not.

Word order decides what a phrase catches

Searches 1 and 2 carry the same intent in the opposite order. Amazon's own phrase-match example is the keyword running shoes showing for "women's running shoes" and "running shoes for men", but not "shoes for running". By the same rule, lid replacement catches search 1 and not search 2, and replacement lid catches search 2 and not search 1. Blocking the intent takes both. Amazon's negative definitions add "or close variations" without listing them, so check after two weeks that the reversed search has stopped. A seller who adds one phrase, sees search 2 keep spending, and then reaches for the single word replacement to be sure has just given up three orders, $90 in ad sales, for the shortcut.

When phrase is the right call

• The wording repeats. The same unwanted words keep turning up inside different, longer searches, so blocking today's searches one at a time will not keep up.
• The intent is wrong in every combination. Before you add it, list every search in your report that contains the wording and has an order, over the longest history you have. If that list is not empty, the phrase is too short.
• The phrase is as long as the intent needs. Two or three words that only mean the wrong thing are safer than one word that sometimes does.

Exact is the right call for a single search that is wrong while its neighbors sell, and for a search you have only just started doubting. Whether a search with no orders has had enough clicks to doubt is its own arithmetic: how many clicks before negating a search term.

Where this still needs a person

A phrase negative is a bet on searches you have not seen. The table above can only count the searches in your report; it cannot show what replacement would have blocked next season. Amazon does not publish a complete list of what it counts as a close variation, so any reading of a negative's coverage is an approximation of Amazon's matching. One gap is known: Amazon's own example of an exact-match close variant is "white running shoes" showing for "running shoes white", a change of word order, and Vendlen's comparison does not fold word order.

Match type is also only half of the decision. Where the negative lands, one ad group or the whole campaign, decides how much of the product's traffic it touches, and a negative in one ad group leaves the search running everywhere else: why a negative keyword only blocks one ad group.

What to do with this

1. Before adding a phrase negative, filter your search term report for every search containing the wording, over the longest dates you can pull, and add up the orders and ad sales in it.
2. If any of those searches sell, lengthen the phrase until it only matches the ones that do not, or use exact on each search instead.
3. Check both word orders. If the intent reads either way round, it needs two phrases.
4. Before adding an exact negative, look for an existing one that differs only by a plural, punctuation or a small word. It may already be blocking the search.
5. Give a new negative two weeks or more before you judge it, then read the searches it was meant to stop, ad group by ad group. In Vendlen the negation filter in the Search terms workspace of Ads Manager lists what is already blocked, by campaign or ad group; the matching rules are in Harvest, negate and unnegate.

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