Categorization and Getting Items Out of the Miscellaneous Category

One of the biggest downward pulls on profitability on shopping comparison engines is the placement of items into the “Miscellaneous” aka “Misc.” category.

When categorizing items, a comparison engine will many times simply drop the item into this “misc” category if a good match is not found by the engine’s algorithms. On this surface this seems OK, because it is extremely hard to put together a simple taxonomy capable of holding millions of products (CSE marketers and engineers, I feel your pain). The problem for retailers is that when this happens to their products, it can dramatically pull down performance.

Thinking about this in a brick and mortar sense, imagine in a store, there is a big grab basket of items in the back. These items don’t appear on a shelf where consumers will find them, instead lying destitute in a confused collage of custom sewn quilts, portable pet massagers, and exotic wall art. The chances of a consumer sifting through this barrage of merchandise to find your mis-categorized item is slim. That is the reason why it is essential to pull the item out, and find a category to place the item into.

November 6th, 2007