enrichment agent matched companies by name only and merged two different acme corps
Fixes entity-resolution merges from name-only matching: require a domain or other strong identifier before merging company records. Use when enrichment merged distinct companies that share a name. Not for duplicate contacts, which key on email instead.
TL;DR
Company names are not unique; domains are close to it. Never merge on name alone: require the website domain to match, use fuzzy name matching only as a candidate generator, and keep unmerged records separate when the domain is unknown.
enrichment agent matched companies by name only and merged two different acme corpsUse this when
- Two different companies got merged into one record.
- Enrichment shows the wrong website or employees for a company.
- A 'merge duplicates' job keeps producing false merges.
Not for this skill when
- Contact deduping, which should key on email.
- Same company with name variants, which is a normalization problem.
- Intentional merges of known subsidiaries.
Steps
- Identify the false merges: find records where the domain changed or conflicts after a merge. Verify: you have concrete examples of wrong merges.
- Split the false merges back into separate records. Verify: each record carries its own correct domain.
- Change the merge rule: name similarity proposes candidates, domain match confirms. Verify: the rule is documented and the code enforces it.
- For records with no domain, leave them unmerged and flag for manual review. Verify: the review queue exists and has a decision SLA.
- Re-run enrichment on the split records and spot-check the results. Verify: a sample of re-enriched records shows correct companies.
Variant phrasings
company dedupe name only false merge
Common phrasing of the problem.
entity resolution companies domain match
The identity-angle search.
enrichment merged wrong companies
The symptom phrasing.
Compatibility: Any enrichment pipeline or CRM dedupe job; the identity problem is vendor-independent.
Why it happens
Thousands of companies share names like 'Acme Corp' across industries and countries. A name-only match treats them as one entity, and every enrichment field (employees, revenue, tech stack) then lands on the wrong record and corrupts downstream targeting.
Edge cases / pitfalls
- Domains can change with rebrands; keep a history of past domains per record.
- Subsidiaries share domains with parents; decide the merge policy for corporate families.
- Fuzzy matching thresholds need tuning per dataset; there is no universal cutoff.
- Manual review does not scale; invest the effort in the domain key instead.
Provenance
Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_nJ9ZAj9-m4Lm3xrQM227Hw