Product Matching
Bryan Nye avatar
Written by Bryan Nye
Updated over a week ago

When MetaLocator initializes a retailer for a given brand, all products from that brand available from the retailer are considered.  Whether its a crawler, API integration or data feed, MetaLocator requests all products for the brand available from that retailer.

The request process typically leverages an existing search system on the retailer's Web site or API.

This request commonly returns all products from a brand, including:

  • Current, valid products

  • Refurbished products

  • Used or parts-quality products

  • Off-brand replacements

  • And so forth...

The retailer stock will often differ greatly from those products of interest by the manufacturer.  Therefore, a matching process must occur which determines which of the products obtained by the crawler or API correspond to the SKUs loaded by the manufacturer into MetaLocator.

This matching process can be broken down into 4 distinct processes, executed in the following order:

  1. AutoMatch: When the SKU matches exactly between the retailer and manufacturer and other similarities provide the highest level of match confidence (100% confidence)

  2. KeyMatch: When one or more secondary keys, such as the UPC, MPN, Model Number and other similarities provide a very high level of match confidence (95% or better confidence)

  3. IntelligentMatch:  When keys are not available from the retailer, a heuristic process leveraging a descending stack of match methodologies is used to match products.  Lower confidence matches in this category may also be passed on for manual matching.  (80-94.9% confidence)

  4. ManualMatch: When all automated methods are exhausted, the remaining list of products from a retailer are passed to our research staff.  Researchers review each unmatched product and determine if a corresponding manufacturer product exists.

Each time the retailer data feed is processed, the result may include new products.  These new products trigger the matching processes above for any new products.

Retailers may offer more than one product that matches a given manufacturer product.  For example, in the case of Amazon, or other marketplace-style retailers, they may offer the exact same, or very similar product from multiple marketplace sellers.  Marketplace retailers can optionally display multiple offers per product in the Where to Buy UI or the marketplace import options can restrict the number of offers and impose a prioritization.

This is a summary of the product matching process.  Other, proprietary aspects support this processes.  Contact your account manager for details.

Manual Match

 To manually connect a monitored product with a retailer product, follow the below procedure:

  1. Begin by clicking Retailers on the main navigation.

  2. Click the ellipsis menu and click View Offers as shown:

3. Find the retailer product to which a monitored product should be matched by searching the retailer offers.
4. Click Match next to the retailer product as shown below:

5. In the resulting dialog find the monitored product to which the selected retailer product should be matched by searching.   Check the box next to the desired monitored product and click Choose Selected.  

This will connect the retailer product to the monitored product with a 100% confident match.

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