The SearchEngine: A holistic approach to matching

Arbeitspapier

The SearchEngine is an open source project providing an integrated framework for diverse matching activities, especially the linkage of large scale firm data by fuzzy criteria like company names and addresses. At its core, it utilizes an efficient candidate retrieval mechanism implementing a word respectively token driven heuristic. Every record in one table becomes a search term to retrieve similar candidate records in the base table according to a search strategy replacing blocking strategies of conventional matching efforts. Because similarity is inherently established by the candidate selection, it is only required to filter false positives by using the meta data export file derived from the matching heuristic to implement a machine learning approach. This paper discusses the general foundation of the heuristic and the algorithm while two detailed walkthroughs of company linkages show practical examples.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 23-001

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access ; Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs: Other Computer Software
• Subject: data linkage ; firm matching ; entity resolution ; machine learning

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Doherr, Thorsten
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/268428
• Last update: 2025-03-10T11:43:00+0100