Negative keyword finder and generator for Amazon PPC
Free Negative Keyword Tool for Amazon PPC
Find the search terms eating your ad budget, and cut them. Start free in your browser today, put it on autopilot in Ad Badger, or hand it to your AI in Claude, ChatGPT or Hermes.
Run my free negative keyword auditFree with your email. Upload an Amazon bulk file and get your suggested negative exacts and phrases.
How do you find negative keywords on Amazon?
Pull your search terms from a search term report or a bulk file. Find the terms that spent money and never made an order. Check each one really doesn't fit your product, then add it as a negative exact, or a negative phrase when a word never fits. Ad Badger does every step for you, from a free one-off audit to rules that run every night.
8 ways to find and cut wasted ad spend, from free to fully automatic
1Free: the Badger Sheets audit
Upload an Amazon bulk file and get your account scored, your wasted spend sized, and the 25 search terms that cost the most without a single sale, ready to add as negative exacts, plus suggested negative phrases. Free with your email.
Best for: a first look, or a monthly checkup without any software.
Badger Sheets' suggested negative exacts for an example account (made-up figures).
2Free: n-gram analysis
Most wasted spend isn't one bad search term. It's a word that shows up in dozens of them. The free n-gram analysis breaks your search terms into single words and phrases so you can see which ones drain your budget.
Best for: waste spread thinly across many terms.
3Manual control: Search Term Quick Attack and saved filters
In Ad Badger, filter your search terms the way you like to work, save the filter, and block any term in a couple of clicks, as negative exact or phrase, in its own ad group or another one.
Best for: hands-on sellers who want to see every term before it goes.
4Rules that run themselves: the Negative Keyword Nightly Hunt
Write your rule once, for example "over 20 clicks and no sale becomes a negative exact", and Ad Badger hunts on the schedule you choose: nightly, weekly or on the days you pick.
Best for: accounts too big to check by hand.
5Long lookbacks: catch the slow leaks (up to 999 days)
A 30- or 60-day rule never sees a term that gets 5 clicks a month and never sells. Ad Badger's automations can look back over up to 999 days of search term reports, so that same term is caught at 60 clicks over a year. More below.
Best for: mature accounts with a long tail.
6Track it: non-converting spend at search-term level
Ad Badger's Non-Converting Spend Dashboard tracks waste down to the individual search term, and the Poor Performers dashboard lists the keywords and targets to pause.
Best for: knowing whether waste is going down, week after week.
7Ask your AI: Ad Badger in Claude or ChatGPT
Connect Ad Badger to Claude or ChatGPT and ask in plain English: "Which search terms wasted the most in the last 90 days?" It reads your search terms and n-grams straight from Ad Badger. Works on every Ad Badger plan, free trials included.
Best for: quick questions without building a report.
8The full analysis: the Wasted Spend skill
A free Ad Badger skill that runs in Claude, ChatGPT or Hermes and gives you the complete wasted spend report. It gets better as we improve it, and you can put it on a schedule. More below.
Best for: the whole picture, line by line.
Why a 30-day window misses your slowest leaks
Most negative keyword rules look at the last 30 or 60 days. Take a search term that gets 5 clicks a month and never sells. In any 30-day window it has 5 clicks, far under a 20-click rule, so it is never caught. Over a year it has taken 60 clicks and still sold nothing.
Ad Badger's negative keyword automations can look back over up to 999 days of search term reports, so a rule like "60 clicks, no orders, last 999 days" catches it.
Ways to cut wasted spend, compared
| Way | Best for | What it catches | Your time | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Badger Sheets audit | A first look, monthly checkups | The 25 costliest no-sale terms, plus negative phrases | One upload | Free with your email |
| N-gram analysis | Waste spread across many terms | The words and phrases behind the waste | Minutes | Free (Badger Sheets); also in Ad Badger |
| Quick Attack and saved filters | Hands-on sellers | Any term you choose | Minutes a session | Ad Badger plan |
| Negative Keyword Nightly Hunt | Accounts too big to check by hand | Every term that crosses your rule | Set once | Ad Badger plan |
| Long lookbacks (up to 999 days) | Mature accounts | Low-click terms that never sell | Set once | Ad Badger plan |
| Non-Converting Spend Dashboard | Tracking progress | Waste at search-term level, over time | A glance | Ad Badger plan |
| Ad Badger in Claude or ChatGPT | Quick questions | Whatever you ask about | Minutes | Every Ad Badger plan, trials included |
| Wasted Spend skill | The full picture | All of it, with a report you approve line by line | Minutes | Free (coming soon) |
Every Ad Badger plan starts with a free 30-day trial.
Free, coming soon
The Wasted Spend skill: your whole wasted spend analysis in your AI
Ask Claude, ChatGPT or Hermes with Ad Badger Skills connected, and the skill reads your search terms from Ad Badger, the Amazon Ads connection or a bulk file, and builds one report:
- Where your money went: spend with no orders against all search-term spend, and your ACOS.
- ACOS power ratio: how much higher your ACOS is than it would be on the spend that sells. In the example below it is 1.32x: every dollar that sells carries 32 cents that doesn't.
- What cutting it would do, and The Wasted Ad Spend Switcheroo: what the same budget brings back when the waste moves onto terms that convert.
- Spend by order count and spend by ACOS band.
- Where the waste is coming from, by campaign and ad group.
- Big Game Hunter: every wasted term sorted by what fixes it: a negative, a pause, or your call. Your own brand terms are flagged, not buried.
- Already buried: what your existing negatives already block.
- Negative keyword automation recommendations: the rules to set so it doesn't come back, with click and spend thresholds worked out from your own numbers, separately for manual and auto campaigns.
You tick the lines you agree with and take them away as a CSV, an Amazon bulk file, a checklist for a teammate or instructions for your AI. The skill itself changes nothing in your account. You can schedule it to run again.
From the Wasted Spend skill, example account with made-up figures.
See everything the Wasted Spend skill does →
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Negative keyword features: Ad Badger vs other Amazon PPC tools
Of these tools, Ad Badger publishes the longest negative keyword lookback, up to 999 days, and it's a flat monthly fee, never a cut of your ad spend.
| Negative keyword rules | Longest rule lookback | N-gram analysis | Wasted spend by search term | Bulk files | Use it from Claude or ChatGPT | Free to start | From (per month) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ad Badger | Yes: Negative Keyword Nightly Hunt | Up to 999 days | Yes (N-Gram Explorer; free in Badger Sheets) | Yes: Non-Converting Spend Dashboard | Yes: free bulk file audit; the skill exports bulk files | Yes, on every plan, trials included | Free audit and n-grams; 30-day free trial | $275, flat |
| Helium 10 (Adtomic) | Yes | Not published (help suggests 60 days) | Not published | Yes: Audit Report (60 days) | Bulksheet upload not available; CSV export | Yes: MCP on the Diamond plan | Free account audit; ads tools need Diamond | $359 + 2% of managed ad spend |
| Pacvue | Yes | Not published | Not published | Not published | Not published | Yes: MCP, read-only | Not published (demo) | Not published |
| Perpetua | Suggests negatives for you to approve | 12 months (word suggestions) | Single root words | Not published | Its own CSV bulk edits | Yes: MCP | Not published | $695 (up to $10k ad spend) |
| Teikametrics | Yes: custom filters in automatic mode | Not published | Not published | Not published | Its own CSV upload | Yes: MCP in early access, read-only | 30-day free trial | $179 (up to $10k ad spend) |
| Scale Insights | Yes | 180 days (word rule) | Single words | Yes: filter for search terms with 0 sales | Not published | Yes: MCP in open beta | 30-day free trial | $78 (5 ASINs) |
| Intentwise | Yes | Not published | Yes | Saved filter for zero-revenue search terms | Not published | Yes: AI Gateway (MCP) | 2-week free trial | Not published |
| SellerApp | Yes: Auto-Negate | 60 days | Not published | Free PPC audit tool | Its own spreadsheet upload | Not published | Free plan (no ads automation); free PPC audit | $149 for 3 months, then $250 |
Checked against each company's own website on 27 October 2026. Features change; tell us if something here is out of date.
Frequently asked questions
What is a negative keyword on Amazon?
A word or phrase you tell Amazon not to show your ad for. Searches that match it stop costing you money.
Negative exact or negative phrase?
Negative exact blocks one search term and nothing else. Negative phrase blocks every search that contains the phrase, so use it with care: one word can block searches that sell.
How many clicks before I add a negative keyword?
It depends on your price and how often your product converts. A common starting rule is around 20 clicks with no sale; slow sellers need longer windows. The Wasted Spend skill works the numbers out for you: from your own conversion rate and target ACOS, it suggests the click and spend thresholds for your negative keyword rules, separately for manual and auto campaigns.
Is there a free negative keyword tool for Amazon?
Yes. The Badger Sheets audit is free with your email: upload a bulk file and get your suggested negative exacts and phrases, plus a free n-gram analysis.
Negative keyword tool, finder or generator: what's the difference?
Same job, different names. A finder or generator surfaces the search terms to block; a tool usually also adds them for you. Ad Badger does both, by hand or on autopilot.
Can AI find my negative keywords?
Yes. Connect Ad Badger to Claude or ChatGPT and ask, or run the free Wasted Spend skill for the full report.