Smart Rules
Negative keywords & negation
Negative keywords stop wasted spend at the source — here is exactly how MerchDash places them.
A negative keyword tells Amazon: never show my ad for this query again. Since ads pay per click, queries that click but never convert are pure loss — negation is how you shut them off permanently. It is the highest-leverage cleanup in Amazon advertising: unlike a bid cut, a negative stops the bleeding completely.
Negative exact vs. negative phrase
| Type | Blocks | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| Negative exact | Only that precise query. | Default. Surgical — no risk of blocking good variants. |
| Negative phrase | Every query containing the phrase. | A word/phrase is toxic in all its forms (a competitor brand, “free”, an irrelevant niche). |
Prefer exact until a pattern is unmistakable: one careless negative phrase can silently block thousands of good queries.
Where MerchDash places negatives
Placement is scoped to cut waste without over-blocking. When a Smart Rule negates a term:
- At the source campaign — the negative goes into the exact ad group the term delivered from, leaving the same query free elsewhere.
- In other target campaigns — the negative is placed at campaign level, blocking the term across the whole campaign.
- Already-negated terms are skipped at the source, and ASIN-shaped terms are skipped entirely (Amazon rejects them as negative keywords — exclude those via targeting instead).
The same placement applies wherever negation happens: Smart Rules, addNegative() in scripts, and bulk actions (which negate in each ad group the keyword actually delivered in).
Negation + harvesting: the flywheel
Negate-exact at the source and promote-exact into a performance campaign are two halves of one motion: the term leaves the loose net and reappears under precise control. Run both from one Smart Rule and your research campaigns stay clean while winners scale.