Tags & Filtering

Organize products and let customers filter by category.

What are tags?

Tags are flat labels you attach to products. There is no hierarchy, so no parent tags, no child tags, and no family tree to keep tidy. One product can carry many tags, and one tag can sit on any number of products.

Adding tags to products

1. Edit a product and scroll to the Tags section
2. Click the box to see every tag you already have, with the number of products using each one
3. Start typing to narrow the list, then click a tag or press Enter to add it
4. Typing something new offers Create "your tag" at the top of the list
5. Click the X on a pill to remove it, or press Backspace in an empty box
6. Click Save when you're done

Picking from the list rather than retyping is worth the half-second: it is how you avoid ending up with t-shirt and tshirt as two separate tags.

A product can hold up to 20 tags, and each tag can be up to 50 characters.

Casing and duplicates

Your capitalisation is kept exactly as you type it, because Hoodies is what you want shoppers to read on a filter pill. The same tag can't be added twice to one product, whatever the casing.

Across different products it works differently, and this is the part worth knowing: type Games on one product and games on another and you now have two tags. They filter separately and both show in your shop. The tag picker offers what you already use so this rarely happens, and the Tags page below spots any that slip through and merges them in one click.

In your shop, tag pills always display capitalised, so the filter bar looks tidy however the tags were typed.

The Tags page

Products → Tags in the sidebar lists every tag you have, with the number of products carrying each one. It is where you tidy up rather than editing products one at a time.

• New tag creates a tag before anything uses it, handy when you're planning a collection ahead of time. It shows as Unused until you put it on a product
• Rename changes a tag on every product carrying it, in one pass
• Merge appears when the same tag exists in more than one spelling, and collapses them onto whichever you pick
• Delete removes a tag from every product. The products themselves are untouched

Tag examples

A few ways stores tend to slice things up:

• Product type: t-shirts, hoodies, mugs
• Collections: summer-collection, new-arrivals
• Promotions: sale, clearance
• Attributes: organic, handmade
• Sizing: mens, womens, kids

How filtering works

Every tag doubles as a filter on your shop page. A customer clicks one to narrow the product list.

1. Clicking a tag shows only products that have that tag
2. Clicking the same tag again shows all products
3. The URL updates (e.g. /shop?tag=sale) so filtered views are shareable

Tags in the URL

The active tag lives in the URL query string, so you can link straight to a filtered view from anywhere:

• yoursite.com/shop?tag=sale
• yoursite.com/shop?tag=new-arrivals

Drop these links into Ghost posts, emails, or your site navigation to send visitors right to a category.

Tags in breadcrumbs

The first tag on a product becomes its breadcrumb on the product page. For example:

• With tags: Shop > T Shirts > Classic Tee
• Without tags: Shop > Classic Tee

Clicking that breadcrumb tag filters the shop to it.

Best practices

• First tag matters: it appears in breadcrumbs, so pick the most useful category
• Keep tags simple: short, hyphenated names like new-arrivals work best; casing sorts itself out
• Be consistent: decide on a naming convention and stick with it across all products
• Don't over-tag: 3-5 tags per product is usually enough