Section 15 — Category Gallery
The Category Gallery provides a consolidated, human-readable and machine-readable view of how CatalogPilot structures, enriches, and delivers category-level metadata.
Unlike the Product Gallery, which focuses on individual SKUs and variants, the Category Gallery exists primarily to support search engine and AI crawler understanding of category intent, hierarchy, and relevance.
Merchants should treat this view as informational and confirmatory, not as a primary editing surface.
Purpose of the Category Gallery
The Category Gallery is designed to:
- Anchor category-level intent for crawlers and AI systems
- Provide structured metadata that most platforms do not expose natively
- Strengthen discovery pathways for all products within a category
- Ensure consistent semantic framing across collections, assortments, and curated groups
Category enrichment is about machine comprehension, not storefront presentation.
Gallery Layout Overview
The Category Gallery uses the same three-column structure as the Product Gallery:
Left Column — Human-Readable Context
- Category image carousel (when available)
- Category title and alternative title
- Short and long descriptions
These descriptions are not typically displayed to storefront visitors on most platforms.
They exist to provide contextual grounding for the machine-readable metadata in the adjacent columns.
Middle Column — ADA, Social & Structural Metadata
This column includes:
- ADA image metadata (Title, Alt, Caption)
- OpenGraph metadata
- Twitter/X metadata (where applicable)
If all products within the category have been enriched, each related image will display unique ADA tags, ensuring accessibility compliance and consistent image interpretation by screen readers and crawlers.
Right Column — SEO, Legal & AI Anchors
This column contains:
- SEO metadata (Meta Title, Meta Description, Keywords, H1–H3)
- Legal/PCI provenance (merchant identity, address, policies)
- AI semantic fields (LLM summary, differentiator, target audience, shopping style)
These fields are explicitly optimized for non-human consumers:
- Search engines
- AI discovery systems
- Shopping feeds
- Knowledge graph ingestion
Original vs Approved Toggle
As with Product Gallery views, merchants can toggle between:
- Original — Content detected from the platform and storefront
- Approved — CatalogPilot-generated and approved metadata
In most cases, the Original view for categories contains little or no usable data, which reinforces the value of category-level enrichment.
Once approved, the Approved view becomes the authoritative semantic reference for that category.
Category Images & Inheritance Behavior
As merchants navigate through category images:
- Each image inherits structural context from the category
- ADA metadata is generated with awareness of both:
- The category theme
- The products associated with it
This ensures that category images do not exist in isolation but contribute meaningfully to overall discoverability.
Editing Guidance
Merchants are not required to edit category gallery fields.
- Most fields are generated deterministically
- Editing should only occur if the merchant has verified, factual information
- Invented or speculative edits should be avoided
Category enrichment is designed to be:
- Stable
- Low-maintenance
- Non-destructive
Why Category Galleries Matter
Most eCommerce platforms provide little to no structured category metadata for crawlers.
By enriching categories independently:
- CatalogPilot establishes clear semantic boundaries
- All products within a category benefit indirectly
- Discovery signals compound across the catalog
This is a foundational element of catalog-level intelligence, not an optional enhancement.
Key Takeaway for Merchants
The Category Gallery exists so machines understand what your category means, not just what it contains.
Merchants should:
- Review at a glance
- Approve with confidence
- Move on
The system is designed to do the heavy lifting automatically.
