Etsy Taxonomy Browser Tool

Etsy product categories give you better SEO

Using the best category for your product is the easiest way to get your listing to appear higher in search. But sometimes it can be hard to pick the right category.

Ever searched for a category and couldn’t find it? That’s because most categories don’t exist. The way that a taxonomy is designed, it’s impossible to create a category for every single possible product. So, most of us sellers need to use our best judgement and sometimes get creative.

Product Categories are used to match customer search queries

Just like your title, description, and tags, the Etsy product category is used for matching search queries. So, if you want to rank higher in Etsy search, you need to pick the best category.

In our example above, choosing the “Gender-Neutral Adult Clothing” means that our listings could appear for the search query “Adult tie-dye shirt”. Our shirt is better for kids, so choosing the subcategory “T-Shirts” under the “Girls’ Clothing” category is best.

This helps our listing stand out against other search queries for “tie-dye shirt”. Because if Etsy figures out that a customer is searching for “kids tie-dye shirt”, our listing will appear instead of the listings that are categories under “Gender-Neutral Adult Clothing”.

Sometimes you should split up your listings and target them toward a specific customer demographic instead of creating one generalized listing.

Continuing with the tie-dye example. That might mean that we need to make 4 listings instead of 1. A listing for Women, Men, Girls, and Boys. This strategy makes it easier for our listing to appear for the more specific search queries.

What category do you choose when it doesn’t exist?

• Use the most specific category possible.
• Make sure the higher-level categories are correct.
• It’s better to choose a more-specific category that’s close enough, than a less-specific category.

For example let’s search “Tie-dye Shirt”.

There aren’t any specific categories for tie-dye shirts, craft shirts, or anything like that. So, in this case we need should look at the most specific categories available: “Graphic Tees (T-shirts)”

But there’s a problem.

A tie-dye shirt isn’t a graphic tee. Graphic tees have printed graphics. If we select this category, our shirt will show up when customers are searching for shirts with printed graphics. And if people don’t click on our listing, we will lose search ranking and then potential customers might never see our listing.

So, instead we need to choose “T-shirts”

But there are 5 options: Gender-Neutral Adult Clothing, Men’s Clothing, Women’s Clothing, Girls’ Clothing, Boys’ Clothing.

While “Gender-Neutral Adult Clothing” might be the most generalized choice, it could be the wrong choice. If we were making tie-dye shirts that would mostly appeal to kids, we should choose Girls or Boys clothing.

Here’s why…

What’s an Etsy Taxonomy ID?

Every Etsy product category has a unique identifier, the taxonomy id. And each one is specific to that node (think folder) in the Etsy taxonomy. In our previous example, “Clothing” and “Children’s Clothing” each have a different ID.

These unique IDs are used to attach your products to the correct category in the Etsy taxonomy.

So, don’t guess, or your tie-dye shirt might end up in the home decor and furniture section.

If you only use the built-in listing editor on Etsy, you never have to worry about the taxonomy id. When you select a category, Etsy attaches the listing id for that category.

This is also how it works with Shop Uploader. You only need to select the category, and we’ll assign the correct taxonomy id for you.

Other tools don’t.

We’ll help you find your taxonomy_id, even if you don’t use Shop Uploader 😊.

What is the Etsy Taxonomy?

A taxonomy is the complete list of product categories that are available on an ecommerce platform. A taxonomy is structured, like folders within folders, so that each layer deeper is more specific, and the top layer is extremely general.

Etsy has a taxonomy but so does Amazon, Walmart, and any other platform.

The taxonomy organizes products into a structure that makes sense. The taxonomy also helps customers browse and search listings.

What does that look like?

“Clothing” > “Children’s Clothing” > “Costumes” > “Halloween Costumes”

You can think of the taxonomy like sections and isles at a brick and mortar store. The top layer of the taxonomy is groceries. Then at the grocery store, to find a bottle of milk, you go to the refrigerated section, then find the dairy, then find the milk and cream. 4 layers into the taxonomy you have found the specific product, 500ml of 2% milk.

The taxonomy on an ecommerce platform works the same way. It allows customers to narrow down their search and organized similar products next to each other.

In fact, ecommerce platforms use taxonomies exactly because they can’t organize the products in a physical store. It’s easy to make sense of products when you can hold them and place them next to each other on the shelf.

In a digital store this becomes more complicated. And a store as large and complicated as Etsy, its on a whole ‘nother level.