Shopify Standard Product Taxonomy
The Shopify Standard Product Taxonomy is Shopify’s own published list of product categories, and every product in a Shopify store should carry one.
- Shopify product taxonomy
- Shopify product category
What it means
Shopify keeps a taxonomy of its own, and every product in a Shopify store should carry a category from it. Shopify can suggest the category from a product’s name, description and images, and the category helps when selling on channels such as Facebook and Google.1
The category also decides what else a product can hold. Assigning one gives the product that category’s own attributes, which Shopify calls category metafields.1
Shopify publishes the taxonomy openly, and it covers attributes and their values as well as categories.2 It also publishes rules for converting its categories into Google’s.3
Think of it like this
It is like choosing a template in a word processor. Pick the one for a letter and the address boxes are already there. Pick the one for an invoice and you get lines for prices instead.
For example
Why it matters
The category helps when you sell through channels such as Facebook and Google, and it decides which category metafields a product is given.1 File a door seal as a fridge freezer and it is judged on capacity and energy rating, which it does not have. Filed as a part, it is judged on what it fits.
Not to be confused with
Sources
- Shopify Help Center. Shopify’s Standard Product Taxonomy.
- Shopify on GitHub. Shopify/product-taxonomy: Shopify’s standardized product taxonomy.
- Shopify on GitHub. Integrations (product-taxonomy repository).
- Shopify Help Center. Solutions to common product CSV import problems.
- Shopify Help Center. Using CSV files to import and export products.