The $5 rule: which search terms live or die

Every Amazon account produces the same weekly question: which search terms deserve a negative, and which deserve a promotion? Most sellers answer it with instinct. I answer it with a small set of rules that were tuned the expensive way — by watching looser rules misfire.

The $5 rule for negatives

Spend over $5 with zero sales → negative exact. That's the binding rule.

I used to run broader criteria — five clicks without a sale, or high ACOS on thin orders. They generated piles of negatives, and piles of negatives are their own problem: every negative is a door closed permanently, on a marketplace where search behavior shifts every season. The $5 threshold catches the real bleeders and leaves borderline terms alone to finish proving themselves.

Promoting winners to Exact

• Qualify: at least one order and ACOS under target — aggregated per product across all its Broad and Auto campaigns, so a term that converts twice in two places gets full credit.
• Bid at the proven price: the new Exact keyword launches at the term's actual average CPC. Not a guess, not a default — the price the market already accepted.
• Flag thin evidence: a single order is a signal, not proof. One-order promotions get flagged, with a stricter two-order pass when the account calls for caution.

The routing exceptions that actually matter

This is where search-term work goes wrong quietly:

• ASINs aren't keywords. When the “search term” is a product code, it can't be a keyword or a negative keyword. Winners become product targets; losers become negative product targets.
• Never negate inside an Exact ad group. A negative exact sitting next to the same exact keyword fights your own bid. Those route to a pause-or-bid-down list instead.
• No duplicate Exacts. If the winner already runs as Exact for that product, skip it — two identical keywords compete with each other and muddy the data.
• Mind the paradox negatives. Sometimes a term you negate in Broad is a winner overall — intentional (it funnels traffic to the new Exact), but it should be a decision you see, not an accident.

Every decision gets a “why” column: the spend, clicks, and orders that triggered it. If a rule can't show its numbers, it doesn't run.

None of this is glamorous. It's the difference between an account where the ad spend is working and one where it's quietly funding Amazon's ad business. The rules fit on an index card — applying them every week, without exceptions creeping in, is the actual job.

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