Taxonomy
A taxonomy is an agreed scheme of categories, arranged from broad to specific, that every product in a catalogue is filed into.
- Product taxonomy
What it means
A taxonomy is the scheme of categories a catalogue is filed under. It starts broad and narrows level by level, so every category sits inside a wider one. Google describes its own as sorting products “from broad categories down to specific categories”.1
A shop deals with several at once. Yours follows your own navigation, and Google, Shopify and eBay each keep their own.2 Google and Shopify can work out a product’s place in theirs from its title, description and other details.13
The usual approach is one master taxonomy of your own, mapped to each channel’s, rather than a channel category typed in product by product. WooCommerce uses the word more widely, and calls its categories, tags and attributes “product taxonomies”.4
Think of it like this
A taxonomy is like the classification scheme in a library. Every book has one place in it, from broad subject down to narrow topic. Whoever shelves a book and whoever looks for it end up at the same spot.
For example
Google’s taxonomy files a cordless drill under Hardware > Tools > Drills > Handheld Power Drills, with the ID 2629.5 A DIY shop’s own taxonomy might put the same drill under Power tools > Drills > Cordless drills, because that is how its shoppers browse.
Why it matters
The taxonomy decides where a product is listed, which filters it appears in and which attributes it needs. A product filed in the wrong place is invisible to the shopper browsing the right one. A wrong channel category can also bring rules that do not apply: some of Google’s, such as clothing, add required fields.1
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Google product category [google_product_category].
- eBay Developers Program. Finding categories for a listing.
- Shopify Help Center. Shopify’s Standard Product Taxonomy.
- WooCommerce documentation. Managing Product Categories, Tags and Attributes.
- Google. Google product taxonomy with IDs (en-GB).