All Collections
FAQ
What are browse and search pages?
What are browse and search pages?

Two types of category page every large site uses.

Robin Allenson avatar
Written by Robin Allenson
Updated over a week ago

Browse pages

There are fixed elements of how the site's pages are organised and how category page results can be filtered or refined. We call the combination of the site's taxonomy and refinement attributes the browse attributes. Changing browse attributes typically requires significant engineering or operations effort. Examples of browse attributes include:

- Pages about cars might be organised by makes and models. Within one of these pages, it might be possible to filter by colour, trim, year and engine size.

- A site about children's clothing might have site sections for boys, girls and designers.

- Homeware pages might have browse categories for brands, common types of furniture and the room in which they are most often used.

- A site selling dresses might let the user filter search results by dress length or sleeve length.

Search pages

There are also search result pages, which form the de facto category pages for all the other needs of users of the site. Search pages are an answer to specific query and it may also be possible to use attributes to refine the results. For many large sites the vast majority of category pages are search pages, because they are so easy to create. Search pages are created when a user searches for them or when the site links to them. After, they can be crawled and indexed by a search engine, and after ranking for the intent, its users use the search page as a new home page for that intent.

Did this answer your question?