Adding products to collections by hand works until the catalog grows. A collection built on a product type condition fills itself: any product with the matching type is included automatically. This guide shows how to set one up and how to keep it accurate.
How these collections work
Shopify's help center calls them smart collections. A smart collection uses selection conditions to automatically include matching products. Each condition has three parts: a condition type, a matching rule and a value.
- Condition type: Product type, in this case
- Matching rule: Is equal to, is not equal to, starts with, ends with, contains, or does not contain
- Value: The product type to match, such as T-Shirts
Shopify notes that a new collections model is replacing the legacy manual and smart collections model, so the screens in your admin may differ from older tutorials.
Create the collection
In your Shopify admin, go to Products, then Collections, and start a new collection. Give it a title, set the collection type to Smart, and add a condition on product type. Once you save, products that match are added automatically.
- One type: Product type is equal to T-Shirts
- Several types: Add a condition for each type, and choose to match any condition
- Narrower: Add a second condition, such as a tag or vendor, and choose to match all conditions
All conditions or any condition
This setting decides how multiple conditions combine, and it is the most common reason a collection comes out empty or overfull.
| Setting | Result |
|---|---|
| Match all conditions | A product must meet every condition to be included |
| Match any condition | A product needs to meet only one condition |
Two "is equal to" conditions on product type, set to match all, will return nothing, because each product has only one product type.
Clean up your product types first
With "is equal to", the product type has to exactly match the whole value you enter. Product type is a free-text field, so small differences leave products out.
- ❌ Tees, T-Shirt and T-Shirts used for the same kind of product
- ❌ Blank types, or catch-alls such as Misc
- ✅ One agreed spelling per type, applied to every product
To fix types in bulk, select the products on the Products page, click Bulk edit, and add the Product type column if it isn't showing.
Limits and alternatives
A few rules are worth knowing before you build a lot of these.
- Conditions: A single collection can have a maximum of 60 conditions
- Plan: The Starter plan doesn't support collections
- Product category: You can also build a condition on product category, with the option to include subcategories
- Manual additions: Conditions don't remove products you added by hand
Product category comes from Shopify's standard list, so it avoids the spelling problem. See Shopify product categories and taxonomy and metafields versus tags for when to use each.
Doing this at scale
TaxonomyForge scans your catalog for missing categories, blank or generic product types and empty attributes. It proposes a clean product type and a Shopify Standard Product Taxonomy category with a confidence score, and you approve each change one by one or in bulk. Every change is audit-logged. See TaxonomyForge.