Taxonomy
The hierarchical structure that organizes catalog products into categories, subcategories, and attributes so users can find and filter them.
Definition
Definition
A product taxonomy is the hierarchical classification system that organizes a catalog into categories and subcategories. A clothing store's taxonomy might start at the root with Men / Women / Kids, branch into Tops, Bottoms, Footwear, Outerwear, and then further into T-shirts, Shirts, Sweatshirts, with each level adding specificity.
Alongside the category hierarchy, taxonomy also encompasses the attributes (or facets) attached to products at each level: size and color for all clothing, but material and insulation rating only for outerwear. The combination of category hierarchy and attribute structure determines what can be filtered, how faceted navigation works, and which fields are meaningful for search.
What it's used for
What it's used for
Taxonomy is the foundation that makes search and navigation useful at catalog scale.
When taxonomy is well-designed, consistent attribute names within a category, a hierarchy that matches how users think about products, filters work correctly, search results are accurate, and navigation is intuitive. When taxonomy is inconsistent, every layer above it breaks: filters show partial results, search misses relevant products, and users can't find what they're looking for.
Doofinder
Doofinder builds its search and filter layer from the taxonomy data present in the product feed. If the feed's category structure is clean, facets generate correctly. If attribute names vary across products ("Color", "color", "Colour"), the Field Name Mapping tool normalizes them to a consistent internal name.
Inconsistencies in taxonomy are one of the most common causes of filter problems.
Example
Case study
A home furnishings store has 12,000 products. Kitchen items use material:wood, material:metal, material:ceramic. Living room items use material:oak, material:iron, material:porcelain, the same physical materials described with different vocabulary.
A user filtering by "ceramic" sees only kitchen products. Normalizing the taxonomy across the feed ensures the material filter works consistently across all categories.