Categorisation
Categorisation is the work of filing every product in the category of your own tree where a shopper would expect to find it.
- Product categorisation
- Product classification
What it means
Categorisation decides where each product lives in your catalogue. The question is not what the supplier called it, but where your shoppers would look for it: from the top of your navigation down to the most specific category that is true of it.
It comes early in product data enrichment, because so much depends on it. The category decides which attributes a product needs and which filters it appears in. A supplier’s categories are useful evidence, but they follow the supplier’s price list and warehouse, not your shop.
Parts and accessories need the most care. Suppliers file them under the product they fit, so a door seal arrives among the fridge freezers. They belong in a branch of their own, linked to the products they fit.
Think of it like this
It is like putting the shopping away. Each item goes where someone in your house will look for it, not where it happened to sit in the shop’s bag.
For example
A fridge water filter arrives filed under Fridge Freezers, the range the supplier sells it with. Categorised for shoppers, it moves to Fridge accessories. Google’s taxonomy keeps the two apart as well, with Refrigerator Accessories under Kitchen Appliance Accessories rather than under Refrigerators.1
Why it matters
A misfiled product is invisible to the shopper looking for it, and it drags the wrong attributes into the wrong filters. A door seal filed as a fridge freezer has no capacity or energy rating, so the fridge filters fill with blanks. Channels categorise from your data as well. Google assigns its own category automatically, helped by accurate titles, descriptions, pricing, brand and GTIN.2
Not to be confused with
Categorisation is separate from normalisation. Categorisation decides where a product goes. Normalisation makes the values inside its attributes agree, so Freestanding and Freestanding Baths become one value.
Sources
- Google. Google product taxonomy with IDs (en-GB).
- Google Merchant Center Help. Google product category [google_product_category].