Understanding taxonomy and categories
Learn how the Product Taxonomy field differs from your store categories, which one each audience sees, and how to set the taxonomy on a product.
Every product has a Product Taxonomy field. You find it under Taxonomy, brand & tags on the product page. It is not the same as your store categories. This guide explains the difference and when to use each one.
Taxonomy compared with categories
- Who sees it: the taxonomy is read by sales channels, search engines and AI shopping tools. Categories are seen by your customers.
- Where it comes from: the taxonomy is the standard Google Product Taxonomy tree, built into Orbit. You create and name categories yourself.
- What it does: the taxonomy tells the outside world what a product is. Categories organise how customers browse your storefront.
- How many: a product has one taxonomy. It can sit in as many categories as you like.
- Example: taxonomy "Furniture > Office Furniture > Desks". Categories "Home Office Sale" and "Best Sellers".
Most stores set both. The taxonomy helps shopping feeds place your product in front of the right shoppers. Categories are the shelves your customers browse. What other platforms call collections, Orbit calls categories.
Set the taxonomy on a product
- From your Orbit dashboard, go to Products and open the product.
- Scroll to Taxonomy, brand & tags.
- Click the Product Taxonomy box.
- Type a word such as "desk" and pick from the matches. Or use the arrows to browse the tree level by level.
- Choose the most specific match you can. "Furniture > Office Furniture > Desks" works better in feeds than "Furniture".
Tip: Set the taxonomy before you install a shopping feed plugin. Feeds can reject products without one.
The full Google list is public: view the Google Product Taxonomy. It is the same list you see in the picker.
The other fields in this section
- Custom Type: a free text grouping of your own, such as "Winter 2026". Customers do not see it.
- Brand: who makes the product. One brand per product.
- Tags: labels you can use in rules, such as automated categories and discounts.
- Categories: the store categories this product sits in.
To create categories and add products to them, see Organising products with categories.
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