Catalog & data

Category metafield

Definition

A Shopify metafield tied to a category in the Standard Product Taxonomy (where it's called a product attribute), such as size, color or material, with predefined values that can be linked to variant options and reused across products.

Defined in Product Catalog Enrichment for AI Shopping: The Playbook.

Related terms

Shopify metafield: A custom structured field on a Shopify product, collection, or variant — the mechanism most mid-market merchants use to add attributes without a separate PIM.
Product taxonomy: The hierarchical category structure a catalog is organized under, which agents use to scope what "kind" of product they're reasoning about before checking specific attributes.
Metafield: Shopify's native mechanism for structured custom product data — a typed, named field (material, fit, dishwasher_safe) attached to a product, variant, or category, defined once and readable by themes, Search & Discovery filters, APIs, and AI surfaces.
Product catalog enrichment: The process of turning product facts into structured, validated fields (attributes, identifiers, variant data, offer and policy data) and keeping them accurate across every channel that reads them, so people and AI systems can filter, compare and quote them.
Structured attribute: A named, machine-readable field with a discrete value — material: leather, sleeve_length: short — as opposed to the same fact buried in a marketing sentence.
GTIN: The GS1 identifier behind UPC (GTIN-12), EAN (GTIN-13) and ITF-14 barcodes. It identifies a specific trade item, so the same product can be matched across retailers, marketplaces and shopping engines.

All 157 terms

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