Search results full of the same thing
A buyer searches your marketplace for a particular brand of safety glove in size 9. They get a page of results: the same glove listed by eight suppliers, each with a different title, a different photo, one listed as a pack of 10, another as a box of 100, a third with the size missing. The buyer cannot easily compare prices, cannot tell which listings are the same item, and gives up or picks the first one.
Your catalogue team knows this happens. Merging listings by hand is slow, and new duplicates arrive every time a supplier uploads.
Why duplicates keep appearing
Most B2B marketplaces are built around supplier listings rather than around products. When a supplier uploads, a new listing is created. Unless something checks whether the product already exists, every supplier who stocks a popular item creates another copy.
Recognising two listings as the same product is harder than it sounds. Manufacturer part numbers are missing or formatted differently. Barcodes are absent on trade items. Titles are written by each supplier's own staff. Pack sizes differ, so the same product in different quantities has to be treated carefully.
| Matching signal | Reliability | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer part number | High when present | Missing or formatted differently |
| Barcode (GTIN) | High when present | Rare on trade and industrial items |
| Brand plus key attributes | Medium | Attributes incomplete |
| Title and description | Low on its own | Written differently by each supplier |
| Images | Medium | Supplier photos differ |
What duplicates cost you
Buyers struggle to compare offers, which is the main reason they use a marketplace in the first place. Search results are cluttered, so other products are pushed down. Suppliers compete on who writes the best title rather than on price and service. Reviews, questions and content are spread across copies rather than building up on one page.
Merging by hand ties up catalogue staff who could be onboarding new suppliers.
It also distorts your own reporting. Sales for one product are split across many listings, so category managers cannot see which products really sell, and demand signals that should guide supplier recruitment are scattered.
The product matching we build
- Identifier cleaning: manufacturer part numbers and barcodes are normalised, removing spaces, prefixes and supplier-added characters, so the same code matches in any format.
- Candidate matching: each new or updated listing is compared with existing products by identifier, brand and key attributes, and by AI comparison of title and description, producing match candidates with a confidence score.
- Pack size handling: listings for the same product in different pack quantities are linked as variants of one product rather than merged, so price per unit can be compared.
- Review queue: high-confidence matches are grouped automatically under your rules; uncertain ones go to a catalogue reviewer with the listings side by side.
- Single product page: grouped offers show on one product page, with each supplier's price, pack size, stock and delivery terms, and the best content chosen as the master.
- Ongoing check: every supplier upload runs through matching, so duplicates are caught at the point of entry instead of accumulating.
How offers are ranked on a shared product page is your commercial decision; we build the ranking rules you set.
A cleaner catalogue, day to day
Buyers search once and see one product with a list of offers. Catalogue reviewers work a short queue of uncertain matches rather than hunting for duplicates. Suppliers joining the marketplace find their products attached to existing pages, which also shows them the competition they face.
Is duplication hurting your catalogue?
- Popular products appear many times in search results.
- Buyers cannot compare supplier prices on one page.
- Duplicate listings are merged by hand, when someone notices.
- Pack size differences make price comparison confusing.
- Manufacturer part numbers are inconsistent between suppliers.