Conviction, proven, and opportunity keywords

The right sidebar in the Listing Editor shows your keyword classification state for the open ASIN. Four panels — Conviction, Proven, Opportunity, and None — tell you the strategic role of every keyword in your master list relative to this specific product. This is where keyword research connects to the words you write.

Classification is stored in asin_keyword_map.keyword_class. It's per-ASIN — the same keyword can be "conviction" for one ASIN and "none" for another. Tier (tier_1 / tier_2 / tier_3) is seller-account-wide and lives on the keywords table separately. The two dimensions coexist independently.

Conviction

The 3-5 keywords this ASIN lives or dies on. Your call, not the engine's.

Conviction is manual-only. The classification engine never writes this class. It's set by you in the "Add conviction" popover in the sidebar. Use conviction for the terms that define this product's positioning — the keywords you'd put in the title even if the data isn't showing strong performance yet, because you know this is what the product IS.

Conviction is your editorial judgment. It reflects strategic positioning, not just historical performance. A new product with no SQP data can have conviction keywords from day one.

Once you set a keyword as conviction, it stays conviction until you change it. The engine will run around it.

Proven

Keywords the engine determined are working for this ASIN.

The engine assigns proven when a keyword shows SQP data (Search Query Performance) indicating that this specific ASIN is generating clicks and purchases for that search term. Proven keywords are in the funnel AND converting. The priority is to protect them — make sure they're in the title, bullets, or backend keywords, and that nothing in a listing revision accidentally removes them.

If a proven keyword isn't in your listing copy anywhere, that's the engine flagging a gap: this term is converting but you're ranking for it without intentionally targeting it. Locking it in with an explicit placement will protect that ranking.

Opportunity

Keywords in your reports that aren't converting for this ASIN yet.

The engine assigns opportunity when a keyword appears in your search report data (TST, SQP cross-reference, or Search Term Reports) but doesn't show strong purchase signal for this ASIN specifically. It's in the funnel — shoppers are searching it, and it's showing up in your data — but it's not winning.

Opportunity keywords point to one of two situations:

1. The listing isn't optimized for this term. The keyword isn't in the title, bullets, or backend. Adding it explicitly may move the needle.
2. The term is competitive and you need PPC support. The listing is fine, but organic rank is too low to convert. This keyword is a PPC campaign candidate.

Review the opportunity list regularly. Terms that align with your customer questions in the strategy brief and have meaningful search volume deserve a placement decision. Terms that don't align are worth understanding before dismissing — they may point to demand you haven't addressed.

None

Keywords in your master list that don't have a classification for this ASIN.

none means the engine evaluated the keyword and didn't find enough signal to classify it as proven or opportunity for this specific product. It's in the master list (harvested from your reports), but it hasn't crossed the threshold for classification.

This is the default state for new keywords and for terms that are part of your seller-account keyword inventory but are clearly not relevant to this particular ASIN.

Manual override

You can manually set any keyword's class via the sidebar. When you do, RankASIN sets keyword_class_manual_override = true on that row. The engine never touches rows with the override flag — your decision is permanent across all future recompute cycles.

To hand the keyword back to the engine: clear the manual override. The engine will re-evaluate it on the next recompute and assign a class based on current data.

Manual overrides make sense for:

• Terms you know are strategically wrong for this ASIN despite what the data suggests
• Terms you want to force to opportunity so they appear prominently in the sidebar during a revision
• Correcting engine errors when data is too sparse to produce accurate classifications

When the engine recomputes

The classification engine runs automatically in four situations:

1. After a keyword harvest (when you save a diagnostic)
2. After you save a strategy update for this ASIN
3. After you add or remove a conviction keyword
4. After a 5-second debounce window following any field edit in the listing editor

The debounce is client-side — it's a timer in the editor that fires once per editing session, not on every keystroke. The engine runs on the server; there's no persistent server-side timer.