Reference > Fuzzy matching

Easy Data Transform supports the use of fuzzy matching in the Dedupe transform.

Fuzzy matching allows you to match 2 values that are similar, but not identical. For example if you set fuzzy match closeness to 80% then 2 values that are 80% the same or better are considered a match.

For example, doing a fuzzy match to this value:

100 avenue street, townsville, ohio

Gives:

Value	Fuzzy closeness
100 avenue street, townsville, ohio	100%
100 avnue street, townsville, ohio	98%
100 avenue street townsville ohio	95%
100 avenue st., townsville, ohio	89%
100 avenue st, townsville	72%
100 av. st., citysville, texas	52%
townsville, ohio	46%
742 evergreen terrace, springfield, oregon	36%

Fuzzy matching takes account of whitespace and can optionally take account of case.

Fuzzy matching is significantly slower than exact matching. The closeness score is based on Levenshtein distance.