Category pages are page layouts that are used for displaying structured content such as catalog data. You can use category pages when you want to aggregate content that meets certain criteria or parameters. For example, in an intranet scenario, all company events are maintained in a list that is shared as a catalog. You want the information about each event to appear in the same manner — for example, with a title in bold, followed by information about when and where the event occurs. To avoid having to create one page for each event, you can create some category pages that can be used to display all events in the same manner.

Category pages are closely tied to managed navigation. This is because you can associate a category page with a specific term within the term set that is used for managed navigation. For example, in the company events scenario that was described earlier, you can have a term set in which the different departments are used for managed navigation. You can use two separate category page templates to display the different events. Category page 1 can be used to display all events related to the Marketing department, and Category page 2 can be used to display all events related to the Human Resources department.