Reference > Fuzzy matching

Easy Data Transform supports the use of fuzzy matching in various transforms, including the Cluster, Dedupe , If, Filter and Lookup transforms.

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 treats everything as text and takes account of whitespace. It can optionally take account of case.

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