Fuzzy matching of product names

Question

I need to automatically match product names (cameras, laptops, tv-s etc) that come from different sources to a canonical name in the database.

For example \"

Answer 1

That is exactly the problem I'm working on in my spare time. What I came up with is: based on keywords narrow down the scope of search:

in this case you could have some hierarchy:

type --> company --> model

so that you'd match "Digital Camera" for a type

"Canon" for company and there you'd be left with much narrower scope to search.

You could work this down even further by introducing product lines etc. But the main point is, this probably has to be done iteratively.