5 Source Deduplication Fixes for Semantic Listing Retrieval in Node.js (and What I Kept)
A provider directory that ingests clinic listings from four feeds will hand you the same clinic four times. Use source deduplication as a pre-embedding step instead of a post-retrieval filter: collapse duplicate listing records into one canonical entity, embed that one, and keep every contributing source id on its metadata so a bad semantic retrieval result can be traced back to the feed that…
1. Deduplicate before indexing to reduce storage and query costs. Use deterministic keys like NPI numbers for healthcare providers to identify duplicates. Group by these keys and keep a canonical record with metadata on source IDs.
2. Semantic retrieval changes when deduplication is done first. Treat each record as one real-world clinic rather than a feed row. Define filters for specialty, accepted plans, and postal region. Freshness means removal of delisted clinics within a day. This contract helps troubleshoot search failures.
3. Make the write path idempotent so re-runs of the pipeline overwrite existing vectors instead of appending. This prevents duplicate clinics from accumulating. Use entity IDs as both merge keys at collapse time and upsert IDs at index time.
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