'Smart' product category selection for product_type

Problem: Multiple merchant categories assigned to items

Google and other channels require a product_type to specify the merchant's category for each product.

Google recommends only one product_type be specified, so what happens when you have multiple categories assigned to an item?

To solve this problem, our optimized feeds calculate a field called 'aten_smart_product_category' based on your categories.

Solution: 'aten_smart_product_category' picks the best category

When an item is classified under multiple categories in your store, our system automatically selects the most appropriate category for use as the product_type.

If available for your store platform, the field will be named 'aten_smart_product_category' or something similar.

'aten_smart_product_category' will be mapped to 'product_type' on the Define Fields page, and also can be used for our Categorization Service.

How does it work?

The algorithm assigns a score to each merchant category based on the following criteria:

• How many 'levels' are the path? (higher is better)
• How many characters long is the category? (higher is better)
• Several other proprietary checks reduce the score.

It then picks the highest scoring category.

Next, it applies a clean-up rule to remove text from the category that is irrelevant to product type, such as 'All', 'Sale', "Holiday', etc.

This proprietary scoring algorithm has been developed and refined over many years, and works well for almost all merchants. It does not use any artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

The rules can be tuned to for the specific needs of a merchant by demoting specific categories such that the other categories are picked instead. Please contact us if you require adjustments to the 'aten_smart_product_category' logic.