1000 Tag Limit on {{ collection.tags }}

[Ceri-Waters]

Hiya,

So for a bit of background one of our clients has very large collections, and we use the tags for a filter on the sidebar, however because of the 1000 Tag Limit a lot of these are missing.

Does anyone know how Shopify chooses which 1000 tags to include? e.g. does it go through the products in Alphabetical order and select the distinct ones?

After speaking to Shopify Support directly and a lot of back and forth they said it's done in alphabetical order of the tags but this does not seem to be the case and they have refused to help any further. The tags we're missing are random, and aren't just stopping after a certain character.

Here are some preview links to a test store to provide a better understanding:

No Issue

https://as5udxfwuam8xcwg-24930582581.shopifypreview.com/collections/all

if you go to the 'Filter By' you'll see a rather large list, which contains all of the tags as the 'All' collection doesn't seem to have the 1000 limit.

Issue
https://as5udxfwuam8xcwg-24930582581.shopifypreview.com/collections/mens-watches

This Smart Collection has all of the products on the site in it, but you'll noticed the 'Filter By' options are a much smaller number because of the 1000 Tag Limit, and its random ones that are missing, it doesn't stop after a certain character in the alphabet.

If I can understand how Shopify chooses these 1000 tags the client may be able to order their collections accordingly to bring out the most desirable tags. Our only alternative is to use menus to override the problematic collections, but this will require a lot of admin time from the client to maintain.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Ceri.

[Jason]

The all collection you're talking about. Is that actually a collection you made or the default auto generated one. You'll find there's a difference there.

Some quick comments:

• The order in which the tags show looks right to me.
• the mens watches collection stops (from a very quick comparison) mid way through S - once it hits 1000. i don't see those supplier tags for example.
• The mens watches collection will only have tags that collection has. What random ones are you sure should be included in the first 1000 that are not? I'm only going off what I can see on those two pages so have limited context.

You may also want to reconsider your tagging strategy here. I get that tags can be useful for adding extra data points but there's times when metafields or other approaches make more sense. If you must persist with how you're doing it then you should instead look into other ways to store/display the filtering options.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi @Jason ,

Thank you for the the response. The 'All' collection is the default one which I understand has different limitations. The 'Mens Watches' collection actually contains all of the products from the store (for testing).

If you look at the Filter on the default/all collection you'll notice a lot of tags starting with 'Brand: '. But the majority of these seem to be missing from the Smart Collection 'Mens Watches'.

As an example, the tag 'Brand: Sinn' is missing from the Mens Watches Collection, since it's starting with "B" I'd expect this not be missing from the list. Oddly enough, adding a new product to the collection with a tag of e.g. 'Z' results in it appearing every time.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi @Jason,

Through a process of elimination I have determined the following:

• Changing the collection ordering doesn’t affect the 1000 Tags
• The alphabetical ordering of the product name doesn’t seem to affect if its tags are displayed / not displayed
• The alphabetical ordering of the tag doesn’t seem to effect its displayed.
• Updating a product doesn’t seem to effect the tags in the list, even if we add new tags to the product or update old ones.
• Adding a new product, despite its title or tags seems to result in these tags appearing in the list.
• Deleting a new product, results in its tag being removed from the list even if the tag

Therefore.. my conclusion is that the Shopify system does the following:

• Retrieves a list of products ordered by newest to oldest
• Loops over their tags (In Alphabetical Order) and appends them to a list (assuming it’s not already in the list)
• Once 1000 tags are in that list it stops.

I'll need to do some more testing but I'm confident this is the case.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi @Jason ,

Hmm I've actually produced one case where this isn't true, but the news tags don't seem to be in the default collection either.

Any further insight from yourself would be great.

Thanks,
Ceri.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi @Jason ,

Do you have any further info on this one?

Thanks,
Ceri.

[Robert_Tolmach1]

Shopify is now telling us that the total limit of tags in a store is 250--not the 1,000 cited here. Does anyone have a definite answer? Thanks!

[Jeff_on_Shopify]

If this is the case, this might disrupt our system too.  Can anyone confirm?

>>Shopify is now telling us that the total limit of tags in a store is 250--not the 1,000 cited here. Does anyone have a definite answer? Thanks!

[Ceri-Waters]

Hmm my tests seem to indicate it's still 1000, documentation still says 1000 too!

[Paul_West]

The way tags are being used on that site is totally nuts.

There's skus in there, a whole bunch of subcategories, tons of specific millimeter sizes, the list is absolutely huge and totally un-navigable. Its a horrible user interface. This is totally not how tags are supposed to be used. You should be filtering by some clearly defined and not TOO specific attributes such as color, a range of sizes, a few key features etc. It almost seems like they tried to put every single possible product detail into tags. That's totally not how it's supposed to be used. If the result of filtering doesn't give you at least several products in that GROUP, it probably shouldn't be a filter at all.

You shouldn't even be getting anywhere near to a 1000 tag limit. We have a website with 40,000 skus and we don't have more than about 120 or so filter options.

[Jeff_on_Shopify]

My concern was about a store-wide limit because we use tags to control product-specific elements via liquid (e.g., specifying complete-the-look products, specifying how this product should look in a swatch set).

We have a *lot* of tags store-wide but not more than maybe 30 per product.  Most of those are for populating collections and for collection-specific filters (e.g., we might have a women's swim top tagged for a "Tops" filter in the Women's Swim collection but "Swim Tops" in the Women's collection).

[Ceri-Waters]

Shopify Devs any information you could provide on this would be great..

[Ceri-Waters]

*bump*

[Sarah_Shelton]

We are having issues with this too. 

We use tags to allow users to filter by...

1. Type
2. Color
3. Size

We also use tags to include possible search terms...

1. EX: Orange Oklahoma Earrings would have a tag of [OSU]

But, now when you go to All Products the color "Red" is missing as a filter option.  😞  Boo

[Ceri-Waters]

The way in which we got around this in the end was having a 'Menu Override' for particulary large collections. We do this per filter type e.g. Colour and genertate the menu handle based upon a prefix, collection handle and the filter type e.g. "filter-all-colour"

[Sophie_R]

Hi there Ver-Waters,

I am setting up my shop and experiencing the same exact issue.  You mentioned a work around but would you mind expanding on what you mean.  My filters are not working properly due to the 1000 tag limit and I have spent hours on chat and on the phone and no one has an answer for me on how to circumvent this issue.  I am not a developer and if you would kindly explain what you did in laymen's terms, I would be very grateful.  This is beyond frustrating because my shop has a massive inventory and this restriction will kill my ability to set up a Shopify store.  Shopify help has not been helpful in this situation and I am not quite sure what to do.

Many thanks in advance.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi Sophie,

It's a bit difficult to explain it in more laymens terms, we had to do quite a few updates to our template to provide alternative routes. I've sent you a direct message regarding this.

Thanks,

Ceri.

[ChynnaLu]

Hi Ceri, 

We seem to be having the same problem. Would you be willing to send me a direct message as well? 

Thanks, 

Chynna

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi CynnaLu, I don't seem to be able to sorry - I believe it's because your account is only a Visitor.

[ChynnaLu]

That's weird. I've never used the forums before but I have a Shopify store. So I'm not sure what to do to fix that. 

[Ceri-Waters]

Do you want to get in touch with me via email instead? web@waters-creative.co.uk

[Gordon_Chan]

I come across to this situation when I work out a store with lots of filtering is requiring.

The number of tags bloom because of the need for translation, since tag does not have translation supported. we create tag per translation and use pattern to define which tag to be show in UI.

I agree this is kind of abusing the usage of tag, but this is also the way I can see it works for my merchant, they cannot add/remove through editing translation file since the products and their filterable values are managed by integration. So it is highly possible to have a collection with more than 1000 tags....

1000 is a magic number, like the 100 variant options... I cannot figure other ways except to reduce the tags...

Look forward to loosen the 1000 limitation.

[Ceri-Waters]

Hi @Gordon_Chan ,

I can't see them adding support over the 1000 Limit, even on Shopify Plus this isn't the case (I've tried). When testing, I couldn't find any pattern to which tags are chosen in the first 1000 either. Shopify suggested that it was Alphabetical, but this didn't seem to be the case in my testing.

If you're using the tags for filtering, you can translate the tag value displayed instead. A few ways to handle this:

• Use a translation App such as Weglot/Langify - they allow you to add 'Custom' translations as well for specific tags. Their Apps are straight forward enough for clients to add wording.
• Use a JavaScript solution which consists of an array of key/values for the translations and loop over them as needed.
• Setup something using Shopify Sections (not recommended as your config_data.json file would be massive and cause issues in the customizer)

The downside to this approach however is your URLs won't be translated.

[Gordon_Chan]

Hi @Ceri-Waters 

Thanks for the reply. Sadly the 3 approaches are not workable. Since the product creation /  update / removal are being done programmatically with private app using API approach. No manual work to be done for product editing, so no one tag the product so as to provide translation for those tag.

Using JS wont be good and I ever though of having a file to have all tag translation....... I just cant imagine how worst the performance would be if all tags need to loop through that file for translation.

Sad to know you ever tried to raise this for your Plus merchant, as the situation I encounter is exactly for a Plus merchant... who sell different electronic appliances, you know those products have many attributes to be filterable.....

[Linz]

We are having the same problem and we have nowhere near 1000 tags. Please send us your solution too.