Run the Search Match harvest
Promote proven auto-discovered search terms to EXACT keywords, negate them in discovery, and cut the junk.
Search Match is Apple's automatic matching: a discovery ad group with Search Match on shows your app against queries you never specified. The harvest is the loop that turns that raw discovery into a structured, profitable keyword set. It's the core growth mechanic for an Apple Search Ads account, and you run it on a weekly cadence.
The loop
Read the search terms
Pull the queries that actually triggered installs. In the app this is the Search terms page;
over MCP it's asa_get_search_terms. Look at the discovery ad group's terms —
those are the candidates.
Promote the winners to EXACT
A term with proven installs at an acceptable CPA graduates to its own EXACT keyword in a targeted ad group, where you can bid it deliberately. Batches of up to 10 EXACT keywords at bids within 1.5× the account's 30-day average CPT auto-apply; larger or pricier batches queue for approval.
Negate the promoted term in discovery
Once a term lives as an EXACT keyword elsewhere, add it as a negative in the discovery ad group so the two don't compete and discovery keeps surfacing genuinely new queries. Negatives (add and remove) auto-apply.
Cut the junk
Terms with spend and no installs — or clearly irrelevant queries — become negatives too. This is where most of the CPA improvement comes from.
Discipline
- Match types are EXACT | BROAD only — there is no PHRASE. Use EXACT for the terms you've proven and BROAD as the discovery net. See vocabulary.
- Keyword status is ACTIVE | PAUSED, not ENABLED — an easy thing to get wrong when filtering.
- Caps: 5,000 keywords per campaign and per ad group, including negatives. Bulk changes are capped at 1,000 rows per call.
- Track yield week over week: how many harvested keywords are still converting a month later tells you whether discovery is healthy.