Before you run the audit

You need one file.

The Sponsored Products search term report, last 30 days, as CSV or Excel. Either pull it yourself in about two minutes, or ask whoever manages the account — the wording for that is below, written so it reads as routine rather than as an accusation.

Advertising on Walmart instead? Get the Walmart file.

Pull it yourself

If you have access to the Amazon Ads console.

Sponsored Ads → Measurement & Reporting → Sponsored ads reports
→ Create report
→ Configuration: Sponsored Products · Report type Search term
→ Time unit Daily · Report period Last 30 days
→ File type CSV (or Excel) → Run report

Daily, not summary. It makes the file larger and it is the only way the audit can show you a trend, or tell which days are still filling in.
Last 30 days, not the custom range. There is a custom date picker that appears to reach back further, but it errors out in practice on this report. The 30-day preset works, and it is what the audit is calibrated for.
The report takes a minute or two to generate, then downloads from the same screen.

One thing to know about the numbers. Amazon credits a sale to the click that caused it for up to 14 days afterwards, so the most recent fortnight of any export is still filling in and will always look worse than it finally turns out to be. In a 30-day file that is half the rows. The audit marks those days, draws them differently, and leaves them out of any comparison between periods — so nothing here reads a half-finished fortnight as a decline. It is the single most common way an Amazon report gets misread, including by people who pull them every week.

Amazon moves this menu around. If those exact words aren't there, look for Reports or Measurement in the left-hand sidebar, then any report type called Search term. That is the one — it's the report with a row per customer search.

Or ask whoever manages the account

Copy this. It's deliberately boring.

Subject: Search term report — last 30 daysHi [name], Could you export the Sponsored Products search term report for the last 30 days and send it over? Daily time unit, CSV or Excel is fine. I'm pulling raw channel data together for a category review this quarter and want the search term detail alongside everything else. No rush — end of the week is fine. Thanks

If you're asked why: because you're reviewing the category and want the raw numbers, not a summary. That's true and it's enough.

If it's difficult to get: that is itself worth noticing. The ad account should sit in your company's Amazon account with you as owner, and a search term report is a standard export any manager pulls routinely. A reluctance to send one is a conversation of its own.

Run the audit Free · no account · your file never leaves your browser

What you'll get, and what you won't

You'll get the spend that returned no orders, the terms worth excluding, how much of your return is really brand traffic, and how much of your ad-attributed revenue was for products the ads weren't selling.
You won't get a grade, a score, or a verdict on whoever runs the account. It reports the numbers; what they mean is a conversation with the people who made the decisions.
Nothing is uploaded. The audit runs on your device. The file is never sent anywhere and never stored. When it finishes, about fifty anonymous summary figures go to build the shared benchmark — no search terms, no campaign names, no brand name, no file. You can read exactly what's sent, and switch it off, with your results.