# Product Taxonomy: What It Is and How to Classify a Catalog

> What a product taxonomy is, how it differs from your store's categories, how Google, Shopify and ChatGPT use it, and how to design a small one.

URL: https://clione.ai/glossary/product-taxonomy/
Lang: en

A product taxonomy is the tree a catalog is classified with: from "Cameras & Optics" to "Camera Bags & Cases," from general to specific. It is not a blog's taxonomy (categories and tags for articles) or biology's, though the idea is the same. It matters to a store because **every product is classified at least three times**: in the store's menu, in its platform's standard category and in Google's taxonomy when you send it to [Google Merchant Center](/glossary/google-merchant-center/). If the three do not say the same thing, the product ends up in the wrong category on some channel, lacks the fields that category requires or gets a tax that is not its own.

## How it works

**Two kinds of taxonomy.** The first is yours: the tree you organize your [product catalog](/glossary/product-catalog/) with, the one usually seen in the menu. In Google's _feed_ it travels in the `product_type` attribute, which according to Google is for including your own classification system and defining your taxonomy to match your store's navigation. It is written with all the levels, separated by `>` with a space on each side, like "Home > Women > Dresses > Maxi Dresses."[^google-product-type] The second is a standard taxonomy, the same for all stores, maintained by a platform.

**Google's taxonomy.** Google describes it as a tree of categories that sorts products from general to specific, for example from Electronics to Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones, and says it lets it **go beyond keyword matching** and understand what you sell. Every product gets a category automatically (giving the title, description, price, brand and [GTIN](/glossary/gtin/) correctly helps it get it right), and the `google_product_category` attribute is only for correcting it in specific cases: when a category imposes required fields that do not apply, to organize Google Ads campaigns or for alcoholic beverages. Its rules for choosing: **a single category, the one for the product's main function, and as specific as possible**.[^google-product-category] Google's published file in English has 5,595 categories, each with its numeric identifier, and its header shows the September 21, 2021 version.[^google-taxonomy-file]

**Shopify's taxonomy.** Shopify asks you to assign each product a category from its standard taxonomy, and uses it for four things: activating the category [metafields](/glossary/shopify-metafields/) that go with it, organizing products (for example, as a collection condition), selling on channels that require a standard classification, like Facebook or Google, and calculating the applicable tax. When you choose the category "Shirts," for example, the product can carry category metafields such as size, neckline, sleeve length or fabric. Each product has a single standard category and a single product type, which is a free-form field of the store.[^shopify-taxonomy] The taxonomy is public and released in versions: the August 2026 one added no categories and added a size-cut attribute to 465 clothing and accessories categories.[^shopify-taxonomy-release]

**In markup and in assistants.** The [Schema.org](/glossary/schema-org/) vocabulary has a `category` property that accepts text, a URL or a code, and lets you indicate the hierarchy informally with the `>` sign or with slashes.[^schemaorg-category] OpenAI's product specification for ChatGPT also accepts the category path from general to specific, separated by `>`, and the identifier or path of Google's taxonomy.[^openai-products] A single well-made tree serves, with few changes, for the menu, the _feed_ and the markup.

## In a store

A **fictional example**: the tree of a small camera gear store, with its criterion written before classifying anything.

**Classification criterion.** Each product goes in a single category, decided by its main function, not by brand, occasion or price. Brand, season and type of customer are expressed as [product attributes](/glossary/product-attributes/) or as collections, not as branches of the tree. No branch goes below three levels.

| Product                                    | Store category         | Google taxonomy                                                          | Shopify taxonomy                              |
| ------------------------------------------ | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------- |
| 25-liter camera backpack                   | Carry > Backpacks      | 6308 · Cameras & Optics > … > Camera Bags & Cases[^google-taxonomy-file] | Camera Bags & Cases > Camera Backpacks        |
| Padded lens case                           | Carry > Cases          | 4441 · Cameras & Optics > … > Lens Bags[^google-taxonomy-file]           | Camera Lens Accessories > Lens Bags           |
| Hiking backpack with no camera compartment | Outside the photo tree | 100 · Luggage & Bags > Backpacks[^google-taxonomy-file]                  | Luggage & Bags > Backpacks > Hiking Backpacks |

The table shows three things. Standard taxonomies **do not have the same depth**: for the backpack, Google stops at "Camera Bags & Cases," while Shopify has a category just for camera backpacks. The store's tree can group differently than the standards: here the lens case goes with the backpacks because it is bought for carrying, while Google and Shopify put it among lens accessories. And the main-function rule decides the doubtful cases: the hiking backpack is a travel backpack even if a photography store sells it. The Shopify paths are taken from its August 2026 release.


That the store's menu has to copy Google's taxonomy. They are two different things and Google treats them separately: `product_type` is your own classification, meant to match your store's navigation, and `google_product_category` is Google's predefined taxonomy.[^google-product-type] Your menu can call "Carry" what Google calls "Camera Bags & Cases"; what matters is that each product is classified correctly in both. And a standard category is not a collection: in Shopify, each product has a single standard category, and that category can be used as a condition to build collections.[^shopify-taxonomy]


## How to check it

1. **Export your Shopify products and look for the ones with no category.** A product without a standard category stays uncategorized, which can also happen with products created by CSV or from an app.[^shopify-taxonomy]
2. **Compare in Merchant Center the category Google assigned to your products with what they are.** If they do not match, Google asks you to correct the value in your data source.[^google-product-category]
3. **Check your `product_type`**: that it carries the full path, with all the levels, and not just the last one.[^google-product-type]
4. **Pick ten doubtful products and apply Google's two rules**: a single category, the one for its main function, and the most specific available.[^google-product-category]
5. **If your product pages carry `category` in the markup, check that it says the same as the menu and the _feed_.**[^schemaorg-category]

## Related concept: category page

The taxonomy is the classification, a piece of catalog data; the [category page](/glossary/category-page/) is a branch of that classification published as a store page, with its URL and its place in the menu. A store can have a detailed taxonomy and few category pages, because not every branch deserves a page of its own; the reverse, category pages with no taxonomy behind them, tends to end in overlapping categories. In Shopify, a store's category page is a [collection](/glossary/shopify-collection/), which is not the same as the product's standard category.[^shopify-taxonomy]

To keep going, the [catalog and entities reading path](/learn/catalog-and-entities/) orders the rest of the terms, and the entry on the [product feed](/glossary/product-feed/) explains how each product's category travels to Google and assistants.