Goodlookup

Goodlookup is a smart function for spreadsheet users. It’s a pre-trained model that has the intuition of GPT-3 and the join capabilities of fuzzy matching, designed to speed up topic clustering and semantic matching in Google Sheets. It acts like an enhanced lookup tool that understands text beyond exact string matches, enabling more human-like data linking across datasets.

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Key idea and benefits

• Combines traditional fuzzy matching with semantic understanding to match text strings based on meaning, synonyms, and cultural/contextual similarities.
• Helps solve text-to-text record linking problems across multiple data sources with inconsistent naming conventions.
• Extends the capability of data ops in spreadsheets by suggesting matches that align semantically, not just lexically.

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How to get started

1. Subscribe. You must be subscribed to use Goodlookup (Yearly Subscription: US $15 per year).
2. Install Goodlookup. Install from the Google Workspace Marketplace.
3. Use in Sheets. Open a Google Sheet and access the function via the sheet menu > Extensions > Manage Add-ons > Goodlookup. Use the provided examples and functions in your sheet.

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How it works

• Regular fuzzy matching compares strings mostly by surface form. Goodlookup augments this with semantic understanding to recognize relationships like synonyms and broader concepts.
• It can link data across strings that refer to the same idea or person even if they aren’t an exact match (e.g., mapping abbreviations, aliases, or culturally variant terms).
• The scoring reflects the intensity of similarity in the vector space; longer exact matches yield higher scores.

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Use cases

• Semantic record linkage across customer data, product catalogs, or entity lists.
• Topic clustering tasks in data analysis where naming conventions vary.
• Normalizing data from multiple sources to a unified representation.

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Safety and privacy

• The description does not detail data handling specifics. Consider standard data governance practices when using cloud-based add-ons.

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Core Features

• Semantic text matching in Google Sheets
• Subscriptions and paid plan (Yearly US $15)
• Google Workspace Marketplace integration
• In-sheet function availability via Extensions > Manage Add-ons
• Matches synonyms, cultural/semantic relationships, and related terms
• Scores indicating intensity of semantic similarity
• Supports topic clustering and data normalization workflows