Tags

Tags group your products any way you decide, by Clearance or Fragile or Reorder in March, and a product takes as many of them as you need.

A tag is a short label you put on a product so you can find that product again later. Clearance, Fragile, Reorder in March: a tag can say whatever you need it to say, and it has nothing but a name and an optional description.

Most people use a tag when the two other ways of grouping your products do not fit. A category says what your product is, and a brand says who made it. A tag says whatever you decide this quarter, and you can change your mind next quarter without moving anything. A product takes as many tags as you give it, and a product with no tags at all is fine.

You find your tags under Catalog, in Tags. Your Create tag button is at the right end of the toolbar above the list. The table under it gives you one row per tag, with a count of how many of your products use it. Click a row and that tag opens so you can edit it.

One thing to know first: your tags do not nest. There is no parent tag and nothing turns a set of them into levels, so your tags are in one flat list however many you have. If you want something that nests, that is what categories are for.

Before you start

Two things can stop you. Everything else on this page can wait until you need it.

What your role lets you do

Below Manager you get no buttons at the end of a row, no checkboxes down the left of the list, and no selection bar. Your role is set in team, roles and permissions.

Deleting a tag has no undo

How to create a tag

1. 1

   Open the tag dialog

   From Catalog, select Tags, then click Create tag at the right end of the toolbar above the list. A small dialog opens for you with two fields in it.

2. 2

   Name the tag

   Type into the Name field at the top of the dialog. This is the only thing a tag needs, and it is what you will search for later.

3. 3

   Say what it is for

   Write a line in the Description field under it, or leave yours empty. Only your team ever reads it, so use it to remind yourselves what the tag means.

4. 4

   Save it

   Click Create at the bottom right of the dialog.

That is the whole flow. Your tag drops into the list right away, sorted into place by name, and a small message confirms it was created. A new tag starts on no products, so nothing in your catalog changes until you put it on something.

Putting your tag on a product happens from the product and not from here, and the section below covers it. Everything after that is the list, the bulk action and what a tag does on your integrations. You do not need any of it to make one.

Every option in detail

The tag dialog is the same dialog whether you are creating a tag or editing one. It opens from Create tag above the list, or from clicking any row. The button at the bottom reads Create on a new tag and Update on one you already have. On a tag you already have, that button stays gray until you change something.

Closing the dialog with unsaved edits asks you to confirm first, and you can either throw the edits away or go back to editing. Clicking outside the dialog or pressing Escape does the same thing. There is no draft waiting for you after that.

What goes in a tag

Your tag has two fields and nothing else.

Both fields count your characters as you type and show the count under the box. Both trim the spaces off each end before saving, so a stray space never becomes part of your name.

A tag has no color, no icon, no image, no web address and no search-engine fields, and none of them are tucked away on another screen. A brand or a category gives you all of that. Your tag gives you the two fields above and nothing more, which is what makes one quick to create and quick to throw away. Use a brand when you want a description and images that go out to your stores.

When a name is already taken

Two of your tags cannot share a name. Nothing checks while you type, unlike brands and categories, so you find out when you click Create and get A tag with this name already exists back. Pick a different name and click Create again.

The check counts capitals, so sale and Sale are two different tags and both can be in your list at once. That matters, because it is how your catalog ends up with the same idea spelled two ways. There is no merge for tags, so the fix is to move the products across and then delete the one you do not want, which the section on retagging covers.

Reading the tags list

The list under the toolbar has one row per tag of yours.

Products counts your drafts and your archived products too, so a tag showing 4 can have nothing live behind it.

Every column above starts visible, so the list you first see is the whole of it. It opens 50 rows at a time, and the page-size control at the bottom right switches you to 25 or 100. Four buttons are on the toolbar above your list. Search is at the left end, and Columns, Filter and Density are at the right. Columns hides any column you do not want, Filter opens the filter panel, and Density makes your rows tighter or looser. Click a column header to sort your list by it.

Search takes everything you type as one phrase and not as separate words, so on sale finds the tag on sale and not every tag with the word on in it.

Checking any row hides that whole toolbar and puts the selection bar in its place, so Search, Columns, Filter and Density all vanish while you have rows checked. Clear in that bar drops your selection and brings them back.

Finding the tags no product uses

This is the most common thing people want from this list, so here it is end to end. Click Filter at the right of the toolbar above your tags list. In the condition row that opens, set Filter by to Products, set Operator to equals (=), and type 0 into Value. What is left is every tag nothing is using, which is your cleanup list.

A count column has no is empty, because a tag no product uses has a count of 0 and not a blank. That is why equals (=) with 0 is the comparison that answers your question.

That same panel answers your second common question too. Set Filter by to Created by, leave Operator on is, and pick Any integration in the Value dropdown. You get the tags a store invented on its own rather than the ones your team typed. Change that last choice to Any import or Any data source and the rest splits the same way. A set of conditions you build often is worth keeping as a saved view, and filters covers the panel in full.

You can also read the count without filtering anything. The Tags section on your dashboard shows Total Tags, Tagged Products, Untagged Products and Unused Tags, and the taxonomy report lists Unused tags beside the same number for brands and categories.

Where tags come from when no one types them

Your list grows without anyone clicking Create tag, which is why a catalog usually has more tags than anyone remembers making.

An import only creates tags when you tell it to. If Tag does not exist: on the import’s Options step starts on Skip with warning, and Create automatically is the choice that lets your file mint the tags it names. Pick Create automatically when your file is the source of truth for tags. Leave it on Skip with warning when you would rather look at the misses yourself. Imports covers that step.

A recurring feed never invents a tag. The same If Tag does not exist: question on a data source has only Skip with warning and Fail the row. A feed naming a tag you do not have either writes your product without it or rejects the row.

A data source can still work on your tags a different way. Set its target to Tags, and it updates the names and descriptions of the tags you already have. It matches them by Tag Name or by ID.

A tag a store or a file made looks no different from one you typed. Your Created by column is what tells them apart. A tag a Shopify first sync created shows the account’s name followed by Integration, and one a file made shows Import or Data source.

Putting a tag on a product

You do this from the product, never from the tag. The tag dialog gives you no place to add products, and that is the thing about tags that surprises people most.

Open your product from Catalog, in Products, scroll to its Taxonomy section and click the Tags field. Start typing. Matching tags appear under it as chips you can click. A name you have never used appears at the bottom of that panel instead, as a create row reading Create and the name you typed. Click that create row and you get the tag made and attached in one move.

The chips inside the field stay in the order you picked them, and nothing drags. That order matters in one place: the first chip is the tag your products table sorts its Tags column by. To change which one comes first, take them all out and pick again, starting with the one you want at the front.

Finding your products by tag

On your products table, Tags is both a column and a filter.

The column shows you the first 3 tags on a product as badges and collapses the rest into a +N badge whose tooltip names them. It is blank on a variant row, because your tag is on the product above it.

To filter, click Filter in the toolbar above your products table and set Filter by to Tags. The Value dropdown lists only tags that are already on at least one product, so a tag you made five minutes ago is missing from it until you use it. Your comparisons are is, is not, is any of, is empty and is not empty, and is empty is the one that answers “which of my products has no tags at all”.

Retagging many products at once

Update tags is how you move a lot of products from one tag to another. Check the products you want on the products table, and the selection bar replaces the toolbar above it. Click Update tags there.

The dialog opens over the page with one dropdown, Mode, and nothing under it. Pick your mode and the tag fields appear.

Pick Replace to fold two tags into one. Put the tag you are retiring into Tags to swap out, and put the one you are keeping into Tags to add. Every product of yours crosses over in one run. You can then delete the retired tag, which the list will now let you do because nothing is using it.

Pick Overwrite only when your list is the whole answer. It is the only mode that removes a tag you did not name. Leaving its Tags field empty strips every tag off every product you checked. Add and Remove are your safe pair for everyday work.

Add, Overwrite and the Tags to add field of Replace all let you make a tag right there, the same way the product editor does. Remove and Tags to swap out list only the tags the products you checked actually have, so an empty dropdown there means your selection has nothing to take off.

Click Apply at the bottom of that dialog to run it. The action itself is on products, and bulk actions covers how you build a selection and what a select-all changes.

Duplicating a tag

Duplicate is at the end of your tag’s row in the list, and in the ⋮ menu at the top of the tag dialog. Use it when a new tag is nearly the same as one you already have.

It gives you Sale (Copy), then Sale (Copy 2) if you do it again. The description comes across and the products do not, so your copy starts on nothing. A name of yours already at 100 characters is cut short to make room for the suffix.

Deleting a tag

Delete is in the same two places as Duplicate. Look at the end of your tag’s row in the list, and in the ⋮ menu at the top of the tag dialog. Both open a dialog that names your tag, and there is nothing for you to type.

A tag your products still use will not delete, and the message counts how many are in the way. Take the tag off your products first with Update tags in Remove mode, then delete it.

To delete several at once, check the rows down the left of your list and click Delete in the selection bar. The box in the header of the list checks the whole page for you. When more of your tags match than the page shows, a Select all button appears in that bar with the number on it. Click it and the delete covers every matching tag.

A run that big goes into the background, with its own progress and a Cancel button beside it. Your set is fixed the moment you confirm, so a tag created after that is never included. A bulk delete does not stop over one row: it deletes what it can, then tells you which rows it skipped and why.

Limits

What you cannot do with a tag

What a tag becomes on each integration

Whether your tag goes out at all comes down to one thing: whether that integration keeps tags of its own on a product.

That table is where tags part company with the rest of your taxonomy. A brand and a category each turn into something a shopper can browse on most integrations that take product content, usually a page or a collection of yours. A tag goes directly on the product wherever it goes at all, and nothing collection-shaped is ever built for it. Read the other side of that difference in brands.

An integration that groups its products some other way has nowhere to put your tag. One that sells against someone else’s catalog takes no product content at all. In both cases you have nothing to configure, because nothing is being sent.

What a Shopify store gets

Your tags go out as one whole list on every push, so the store’s product ends up with exactly the tags your PIM product has. Take the last tag off in the PIM and your store’s product loses its tags instead of keeping them. Adding or removing a tag queues that push for you.

Renaming a tag pushes nothing. The new name appears on every product that has it inside the PIM right away, and no push is queued. The store keeps the old spelling until each of those products is pushed for some other reason, and a normal edit of yours does that.

The tags a first sync brings in

The first sync from a Shopify store is the one time tags come into your catalog. A product it imports arrives carrying the store’s tags, and a tag name your catalog does not have is created for you. After that it is one way: your list is what the store gets, and a tag somebody adds over there is replaced on your next push.

Categories never come in at all: no sync touches them, and a collection never becomes a PIM category. Read that one-way rule for every other object in integrations.

Your product itself still goes out, just without that one tag. You get no error and no line in any report, so a store that writes whole sentences into its tags is worth checking yourself.

When something goes wrong

Messages in the tag dialog

Saving while someone else has the tag open

The top of the tag dialog shows you who else has it open right now, and whether they are only looking or actually editing.

If they save first, your save is rejected instead of silently overwriting theirs. A notice appears above your fields with a Reload button on it. Reloading brings their version in and throws your unsaved edits away. The fields they touched flash blue as the new values appear, so read what changed before you click it.

If your own form has no unsaved edits, none of this happens and the dialog just refreshes itself.

Messages when you delete

Those first two arrive in English whatever language you use the app in.

Messages from a products import

You read that one against the row that failed, in the results of the import that produced it, and never in the tags list.

Where to go next