Impact of removing competing keywords

Over the years, the SI team engaged with sellers and advertising agencies who had varying opinions on removing duplicate keywords.

After analyzing Ads Insights > Competing Keywords, our SI team made a few observations.

Amazon sends traffic to the keyword with the highest bid.

Duplicates don't seem to drive up the ad cost nor adversely impact performance.

Lower bid duplicates receive significantly lesser traffic, regardless of campaign history, campaign performance, or the number of keywords in the campaign.

Amazon states that having the same keywords won't cause the ads to perform better or worse.

You may check their official statement here.

Duplicates reduce the decline of traffic and the pace of bidding optimization.

The bidding algorithm will adapt by reducing keyword bids if a product reduces conversion due to seasonality, price, or rating changes.

If other duplicated keywords become the highest bid and start receiving traffic, they will go through bidding optimization once it has enough data.

The more the number of duplicates, the slower the decline of keyword traffic as traffic and optimization switch to the next highest keyword bid.

If the drop in conversion is permanent, duplicates may increase unnecessary ad spending as it takes longer to optimize a keyword.

If the drop in conversion is temporary, duplicates may slow the decline in traffic, reducing the adverse impact on ranking and organic sales.