Help - Avoid product duplicates

[WiiWill]

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Hi there, so I have two feeds...lets say Affiliate Window & Tradedoubler importing products into a database. Some of these products I am importing that are from different merchants are the same. How could I avoid duplicating the products or possible merging them together before import?

Any help would much appreciated.

Thanks

[D-Mac]

You could import the feeds into a database, then run a script that looks for similarities between product names. All the possible matches would then be displayed on screen for an operator to whizz through and say yes/no to a match. If it is the same product then mark them as the same in your database. Finally you can export your clean feed into your live database and do whatever you want with the matched products on your live site.

When you get to trust your system you could set some products to auto match based on the 'score' they get.

[webboy]

That could be useful data
why ..you could compare the lowest price of each item and display it to the end customer
or display all the products and let the customer choose who they wish to buy from