Setting up taxonomies for personalized content

In this article, I’ll walk you through how to use Hygraph’s new taxonomies feature to classify content for personalization. The goal is to show you how easy it is to structure and filter content using taxonomies, so you can deliver more relevant and personalized experiences.

We’ll use the example of a travel blog, such as one run by an airline or travel agency, and see how taxonomies can help organize content by destinations, seasons, and interests.

#Setting up taxonomies

Taxonomies provide a structured way to classify content. In our travel blog example, we define three sets of taxonomies:

• Seasons: Trips available year-round or specifically in fall, spring, summer, or winter.
  
• Interests: Adventure, city trips, culture, family, or foodies.
  
• Destinations: Multi-level classification, starting at the continent (Europe, North America), then country (France, Spain, Canada, United States), and even drilling down to regions, states, or cities.
  

This structure allows you to manage personalization in a scalable way, starting from simple categories and extending into detailed hierarchies.

#Applying taxonomies in content

Once the taxonomies are defined, they can be applied directly to your content model. For a travel blog article, this might include the title, image, caption, and content body — along with assigned taxonomy fields.

When editing content, you can:

• Select taxonomies from dropdown menus.
• Use type-ahead search for quick selection (e.g., typing “Barcelona” will return “Europe → Spain → Barcelona”).
  

This makes it fast and intuitive for editors to tag content accurately without wading through long lists.

#Filtering and personalization in action

The real value of taxonomies comes when you use them to filter and personalize content delivery.

For example, in the Studio view, you can:

• Filter blog articles by season (e.g., only show spring-related trips).
• Filter by interest (e.g., only show adventure trips).
• Filter by destination (e.g., show all trips in Europe or North America).
  

You can also save predefined searches, making it easy to quickly access frequently used filters.

This filtering capability extends beyond articles. Assets such as images can also be tagged with the same taxonomies. For example, when replacing a cover image for a travel article, you can filter the asset library by destination to quickly find all images tagged “Miami.”

#Why It matters for personalization

By applying taxonomies consistently across content and assets, you create a structured foundation for personalization. This enables front-end applications to:

• Dynamically deliver content tailored to user preferences (e.g., show “family trips in Spain during summer”).
• Scale personalization without chaos, thanks to standardized classifications.
• Ensure editors and marketers can find and reuse content quickly, improving efficiency.

With taxonomies in place, personalization becomes less about manual curation and more about smart filtering and structured delivery.

#Conclusion

Hygraph’s taxonomy feature makes it simple to classify, filter, and personalize content across multiple dimensions — from seasons and interests to destinations. Whether you’re managing a travel blog or any content-rich platform, taxonomies provide the structure needed to deliver relevant experiences at scale.

If you have further questions or want to see more use cases, feel free to reach out to me or our sales team. Thank you!