A keyword is the word or phrase you add to a campaign and bid on; a search term is the exact text a shopper typed that triggered your ad. In Amazon and Flipkart ads one keyword can match hundreds of search terms, depending on its match type, and it is the search terms, not the keywords, that show where your money actually went.
When you add running shoes as a broad keyword, you are telling Amazon which searches you are willing to compete for. The shopper then types running shoes for men size 9, or sports shoes for running, and if Amazon judges that search to match your keyword, your ad enters the auction. That typed text is the search term. Exact keywords produce search terms almost identical to themselves; phrase and broad keywords produce many; auto campaigns produce search terms with no keyword behind them at all.
Worked example: the broad keyword running shoes at ₹6 spends ₹4,800 in two weeks on 800 clicks and produces 30 orders at ₹1,499, an ACoS of ₹4,800 / ₹44,970 = 10.7%. That looks healthy at keyword level. The search term report tells a different story: 64 search terms matched, five of them produced 24 of the 30 orders, and running shoes for kids took 110 clicks and ₹660 with no order, because the product is adult sizes only.
The keyword report cannot show that; only the search term report can. Blooprint's glossary on blooprint.in covers the search term report itself; this page is about the distinction.
You bid on keywords, but you pay for search terms. Every rupee of waste in an account lives in a search term, and every new exact keyword worth adding starts as a search term that converted. Confusing the two leads to raising a bid on a keyword whose average looks fine while most of its spend goes to searches that never convert.
The same idea runs through negatives: a negative keyword is written by you, and it works by blocking search terms. Impression share is also reported per search term, not per keyword, for the same reason.
| Finding in the search term report | Action | Applied to |
|---|---|---|
| Search term converts well under break-even ACoS | Add as an exact keyword with its own bid | New manual exact campaign |
| Search term has spend and no orders | Add as negative exact | The campaign it came from |
| A word appears in many non-converting terms | Add as negative phrase | Broad, phrase and auto campaigns |
| Keyword average fine, but spend concentrated on few terms | Split winners out, lower the broad bid | The broad keyword |
Turning converting search terms into keywords.
Learn more →The match type that produces the most search terms per keyword.
Learn more →Sort every search term into scale, fix or stop, across all campaigns at once.
Learn more →Bulk PLA creation, placement bids, keyword control and reports Flipkart Ads Manager does not show.
Learn more →A search term is the exact text a shopper typed into Amazon's search bar that triggered your ad. Amazon lists every search term with its clicks, spend and orders in the search term report.
A keyword is what you bid on in a campaign. A search term is what the shopper actually searched. Depending on match type, one keyword can match many different search terms.
Yes. Flipkart Ads provides a search term report for PLA campaigns, which lists the queries that triggered your ads alongside their performance.
Both, in order. Read search terms to find what converts and what wastes money, then act on keywords: add exact keywords for winners, negatives for losers, and adjust bids on the keywords that remain.
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