How Business Records Are Merged

For each record we collect, we generate 1 or more keys for the record. Each key value is based on different unique identifiers that are available from the record's data. If we see a different record with 1 or more of the same keys values, we will merge these two records.

For example, we may generate a business record like this when crawling a web page:

{
  "name": "Joe's Sloppy Joes",
  "address": "123 Anywhere St",
  "city": "Austin",
  "province": "TX",
  "country": "US",
  "twitter": "joessloppyjoes"
}

This record will generate the following keys:

"keys": [
  "US/TX/Austin/123-Anywhere-St/8833444"
]

Let's say we then crawl another web page for the same business and generate this data:

{
  "name": "Joe's Sloppy Joes",
  "address": "123 Anywhere St",
  "city": "Austin",
  "province": "TX",
  "country": "US",
  "websites": [
    "https://joessloppyjoes.com"
  ]
}

This will generate the same keys value, so the two records will be merged:

{
  "name": "Joe's Sloppy Joes",
  "address": "123 Anywhere St",
  "city": "Austin",
  "province": "TX",
  "country": "US",
  "keys": [
  	"US/TX/Austin/123-Anywhere-St/8833444"
  ],
  "twitter": "joessloppyjoes",
  "websites": [
    "https://joessloppyjoes.com"
  ]
}

Business records use the following fields to generate keys:

• address
• city
• province
• country
• name

name is used to disambiguate between two businesses located at the same address (e.g., business located at a mall).