Tags vs Metafields: How to Keep Your Shopify Products Organised

Why product organisation matters

As a Shopify store grows, managing products becomes increasingly difficult and good product organisation doesn't just keep your admin dashboard looking tidy, it can also help with internal search optimisation, staff accountability and reporting.

Tags and Metafields can be used to help organise your inventory but they are often confused with each other, so we're going to explain the difference and recommend the best way to use each option.

What are Shopify product tags?

Tags are keywords that you add to products to help organise and group them. They can be used to search and filter products in Shopify as well as to create collections.

Examples of useful product tags

Depending on the business, tags could be used for:

• Seasonal items eg. spring
• Product ranges eg. footwear
• Material eg. leather
• Colour eg. blue
• Department eg. women's
• Stock status eg. discontinued
• Store placement eg. window display
• Product purpose eg. bestseller
• Campaign eg. Christmas 2026

When used consistently, these can help your customers' experience when searching for products online, but also support your staff to find and count the right products during a stock take.

How does a tagged product add value?

At PML Stock Take, we use tags to support cycle counts and generate workflows, which both help to streamline operations. By specifying what you're counting when creating a new stock take, the system prevents the wrong items from being scanned, keeping your count and report more focussed.

Say for example you are counting women's shoes, but you accidentally scan a pair of children's shoes, you'll be notified that this item hasn't been added to the count as it does not match the tag.

When it comes to updating your inventory with the new quantities, only products with the selected tag will be affected, preventing you from resetting your entire stores' inventory.

It's not just stock taking that can be supported by consistent product tags, it also enables you to bulk edit in Shopify and keeps your in-house communications consistent so your product data is easy to understand and compare.

Tags vs metafields: what's the difference?

So we've mentioned tags, but what are metafields? Shopify describes metafields as custom fields that extend the standard product data model. Here are some examples:

A simple way to remember the difference:

Tags = "What group does this product belong to?"

Metafields = "What additional information do I need to store about this product?"

Let's look at a retail example

Tag

• women's
• winter
• outerwear
• brown

Metafields

• Material: 100% leather
• Care instructions: Dry clean only
• Country of manufacture: UK
• Product launch date: 01/10/2026

You could also include warranty information, size charts, release dates and part numbers as potential uses for metafields.

How to create a product tagging strategy

1. Start simple

Ask yourself:

• What groups do we regularly need to find?
• What products do we frequently manage together?
• What information does our team need to identify quickly?
• What products do we regularly count or check?
• Are there categories that we currently manage manually?

2. Create consistency

For example, decide whether your business will use a code or a term:

SS26

or

spring-summer-2026

Avoid using special characters, or making the tags too long. Remember, you may need to search this on your POS device so make it easy to type out and to recognise.

3. Don't overdo it

Tags are useful, but too many tags can make your catalogue harder to manage.

Shopify currently allows up to 250 tags per product (Shopify Plus has even more!), but just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And don't worry, search engines don't use product tags so having less, won't affect your SEO.

If something needs a specific piece of structured information, a metafield may be more appropriate.

Our tip: Review old or duplicate tags periodically alongside your archived products. This will help to keep things organised and easier to report on.

What about Shopify's other product fields?

Tags aren't the only way to organise products.

Shopify also has a number of other product fields which can be used, so whilst we've mainly talked tags and metafields here, it's worth checking if there is a field already that matches the your intended tag first.

These include:

• Product type
• Product category
• Vendor
• Collections

Let's revisit the product example with some of these in mind:

Product:

Women's leather ankle boot

Product category:

Shoes > Boots

Product type:

Ankle Boots

Tag:

• women's
• winter
• outerwear
• brown

Metafields:

• Material: 100% leather
• Care instructions: Dry clean only
• Country of manufacture: UK
• Product launch date: 01/10/2026

Let's recap

• Tags and metafields have different purposes.
• Tags are useful for grouping and finding products.
• Metafields are better suited to structured, additional product information.
• The most important thing is to establish a system that makes sense for your business and use it consistently.
• Establishing simple rules early can save time later.
• Good product organisation becomes increasingly valuable as your Shopify store grows.

Looking for a simpler way to keep your inventory accurate?

You can give PML Stock Take a try with our 30-day free trial, and make counting your inventory less of a chore.