How to Identify Underperforming Amazon Queries Impacting ROAS
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Quick answer
Underperforming queries in Amazon Ads are search terms that spend budget without producing enough revenue to meet a target ROAS. They often appear in Sponsored Products search-term reports where clicks occur but sales are low or absent. Reviewing those reports by campaign and match type helps isolate terms with high spend and low ROAS, so advertisers can decide whether to add negatives, reduce bids, or move the term to manual review.
For Amazon ads managed with rule-based bidding, the bid automation can still let individual search terms bleed budget if the underlying query does not convert. A small set of terms often accounts for most wasted spend, so pulling a search-term view and sorting by spend, clicks, and ROAS makes those problems easier to act on.
What an Underperforming Query Looks Like
In Amazon Ads, an underperforming query is not always a zero-sale search term. It can also be a query with consistent clicks but a conversion rate low enough to push ACoS above the account or campaign ROAS target. Common signals include:
- High spend relative to attributed sales
- Multiple clicks with zero or very few orders
- ACoS well above a break-even or target level
- The query is loosely related but not a strong purchase-intent match
The pattern matters more than a single day's result. A term that briefly spikes may be seasonal, while a term that wastes budget over several weeks is usually a negative keyword or bid reduction candidate.
How to Find and Classify These Terms
Start with a Sponsored Products search-term report at daily or weekly granularity, then sort by spend and filter for clicks without orders. Comparing spend to sales at the individual query level reveals which terms are dragging down overall ROAS. For accounts with many campaigns, a cross-campaign view helps spot the same low-return query appearing in multiple ad groups.
The Amazon Negative Keyword Tool by Todoza is designed for this workflow. It imports search-term data and classifies queries for negative keywords, bid reduction, or further review using campaign-specific performance signals. Because the tool is read-only, any change still happens manually inside Amazon, which keeps control with the advertiser.
- Sort by spend descending and flag high-spend, low-ROAS queries
- Separate exact, phrase, and broad match queries rather than treating them the same
- Look for shared root terms appearing across multiple campaigns
- Review daily data over a longer window to avoid reacting to an outlier
When This Matters for Rule-Based Bidding
Rule-based bidding adjusts bids based on performance signals, but it still relies on the search terms entering the auction. If a broad or phrase match captures low-intent queries, the rule may raise or lower bids for the whole targeting group without isolating the weak term. Identifying underperforming queries becomes more important because the bid rule may be working as designed while individual terms still leak spend.
When ROAS is below goal, separating the query-level contribution from the bidding logic gives a clearer picture. Negative-keyword decisions and manual bid reductions can then be made without changing the overall bidding strategy until the next evaluation cycle.
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Related guides
Whether underperforming queries come from broad match expansion or changing shopper behavior, they directly affect whether Amazon rule-based bidding hits a ROAS goal. For a higher-level view of that evaluation, see the full guide on evaluating Amazon rule-based bidding against ROAS goals.