GOV.UK Taxonomy and Navigation

An overview

Taxonomy

Something about classification...

Topic Taxonomy

"The Topic Taxonomy is a classification scheme for organising and finding content on GOV.UK, based on its subject area."

Topic Taxonomy Structure

  • It's a (mathematical) tree
  • The root is the homepage

Aboutness and Specificity

  • The Topic Taxonomy is about the subject area of content, or "aboutness"
  • Taxons lower down the tree should be more specific

Content is "tagged" to taxons

This is a visualisation of the volume of content tagged to each taxon.

Topic Taxonomy Scope

All content items, except the ones that aren't content...

  • taxon
  • person
  • gone
  • ...

For the full list, see document_types_excluded_from_the_topic_taxonomy.yml

Uses of the Topic Taxonomy

  • Topic pages
  • Email subscriptions
  • ...

Navigation

Not so new anymore,
Topic taxonomy powered

Topic Pages

Since
"beta" in March, 2017
New design as of March, 2018
Managed through
Content Tagger
Rendered by
Collections
Document type
taxon
A tangent about

Worldwide taxons

  • Currently use the 1st iteration of the design for "topic" pages
Since
June, 2017
Rendered by
Collections
Document type
taxon

Other navigation page types

  • Mainstream browse
  • Policies
  • Policy areas
  • Specialist Topics
  • ...

Mainstream Browse

Since
Launch
Managed through
Collections Publisher
Rendered by
Collections
Document type
mainstream_browse_page

Policies

Since
Launch
Managed through
Policy Publisher
Rendered by
Finder Frontend
Document type
policy

Policy Areas

Since
Launch
Managed through
Whitehall
Rendered by
Whitehall
Document type
policy_area

(Specialist) Topics/
Specialist Sectors

Since
~2014
Managed through
Collections Publisher
Rendered by
Collections
Document type
topic

Other navigation page types

  • Document collection

Points of reference