Broad and auto campaigns are discovery engines. They find the queries you did not think of, and then keep paying broad-match prices for them forever.

**Harvesting** is moving a proven query out of discovery and into a keyword you control. It is the highest-return hour in Amazon advertising, and it is almost entirely mechanical.

**Time: about an hour. Do it weekly, or fortnightly at minimum.**

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-harvest-explainer-ecc70d46.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? Eighty-six seconds on aggregation, exact match, and the step people skip.*

## **Step 1 — Find the queries that converted**

**Amazon Ads → Search Terms**, with [**Aggregated Search Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-terms-and-aggregated-search-terms) switched on.

![Search terms, aggregated across the account](/kb-assets/shot-adv-terms-view-2cadd4.png)

Aggregation is not optional here. In the default view a single customer search appears once per keyword per ad group, so a query that produced twelve orders across three ad groups looks like three unremarkable rows and never surfaces.

Filter to terms from **broad, phrase and auto** targeting, then sort by **orders**, descending.

**What qualifies:** enough orders to be more than luck, at an ACoS you would accept. Two orders is a coincidence; five or more at a workable ACoS is a pattern. Set the bar where you would act by hand.

## **Step 2 — Cross-check against SQP**

**Search Query Performance → Recommended Actions**, filtered to **Add as keyword**.

![Recommended actions, with the add-as-keyword filter](/kb-assets/shot-sqp-recommended-168c63.png)

This finds a different population and is worth the two minutes: queries where you have **impression and click share but no keyword bidding on them**. Some are terms you rank on organically and have never advertised — and those are the best harvests of all, because demand is already proven and you are only choosing to defend it.

The **Why** column tells you which is which. A row saying you are shown and clicked but not bidding is a straightforward add.

## **Step 3 — Check you are not already bidding on it**

**Amazon Ads → Keywords.**

![Existing keywords and match types](/kb-assets/shot-adv-keywords-view-ce68f0.png)

Search each candidate before you add it. Duplicating a keyword you already run means two of your own keywords competing for the same search, which raises your cost and teaches you nothing.

If the term already exists as **broad** and you are adding **exact**, that is fine and intended — that is the harvest. If it already exists as exact, you are done; there is nothing to move.

## **Step 4 — Add it as exact, in the right place**

Add the winning query as an **exact-match keyword**, and put it where you can see it:

**A dedicated harvest campaign or ad group** is the usual structure. Keeping harvested exacts separate from your discovery campaigns means you can budget and bid them differently, and you can tell at a glance how much of your performance comes from proven terms.

**Set the opening bid from what you already paid.** You know the CPC the term achieved in broad; start near it rather than guessing. Exact match usually costs a little more per click and converts better, so a small premium is normal.

**Keep the product the same.** Harvest the term into an ad group advertising the ASIN that actually converted for it. A term that worked for one product will not necessarily work for its sibling.

## **Step 5 — Negate it in the source**

**This is the step people skip, and skipping it wastes the entire exercise.**

Add the harvested term as a **negative exact** in the broad, phrase or auto campaign it came from.

Without this you now have two campaigns bidding on the same search: your new exact keyword and the original broad one. You compete with yourself, your costs rise, and the exact keyword never accumulates the clean history that made harvesting worthwhile.

Negative **exact**, not phrase or broad — you want the broad campaign to keep discovering variants, just not this specific one.

## **Step 6 — Watch it for two weeks**

A harvested keyword needs a fortnight before you judge it, and the failure modes are recognisable:

| What happened | Reading |
|---|---|
| Converts as well or better, similar CPC | working — leave it |
| Converts as well, CPC much higher | you bid too aggressively; ease it down |
| Volume collapsed | the negative is too broad, or exact match is genuinely narrower than the broad variants it was catching |
| Stopped converting entirely | the broad match was converting on *neighbouring* queries, not this one |

That last row is the interesting failure. It means the term you harvested was never the one doing the work — the broad keyword was matching something adjacent. Go back to the aggregated search terms and look at what else that keyword was catching.

## **What good looks like**

Over a few months, a growing share of your spend sits on exact-match terms with known performance, and your broad and auto campaigns shrink toward what they are actually for: **finding new queries**, not serving old ones.

A discovery campaign whose spend never falls is a discovery campaign that is not being harvested.

## **What not to do**

**Do not harvest on one order.** You will fill the account with exact keywords that never fire again.

**Do not harvest competitor-brand queries into exact match** without deciding that deliberately. They are expensive and they convert differently. See [**Generic, Branded and Competitor Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/generic-branded-and-competitor-terms).

**Do not forget the negative.** Step 5 is the one that pays for the exercise.

**Do not do this and a bid change in the same week.** You will not know which moved the numbers.

## **Coming soon**

A **Harvest Keywords** rule type is visible in the rule chooser with a *Coming Soon* badge — *"promote converting search terms into exact keywords automatically"* — along with a **Negative Targeting** rule that would handle step 5. Until they ship, this stays a manual weekly job. See **Rule Types Coming Soon**.

## **Related**

- [**Search Terms and Aggregated Search Terms**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-terms-and-aggregated-search-terms) — step 1, and why aggregation matters.
- [**Keywords and Match Types**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/keywords-and-match-types) — step 3 and 4.
- [**Find converting search queries you aren't bidding on**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/sqp-and-keywords-finding-unbid-queries) — the SQP-first version of the same hunt.
- [**Cut Wasted Ad Spend in an Afternoon**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/cut-wasted-ad-spend) — the other half of search-term hygiene.
- [**Score Your PPC Performance**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/score-your-ppc-performance) — where harvesting sits among the eight reports.
- [**Search Term Harvesting: Criteria and Bids**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/search-term-harvesting-criteria-and-bids) — the criteria, the fifteen-term cap and the starting bids.