URL deduplication means finding and removing duplicate URLs from a dataset.

The same page can appear in several formats:

  • https://example.com
  • https://www.example.com/
  • https://example.com/?utm_source=newsletter
  • http://example.com

Raw exact matching can treat those as different URLs. URL-aware matching lets you decide which URL components identify a distinct record.

What URL normalization can remove

With Smart URL matching, Datablist ignores protocol differences and a trailing slash. Optional settings can also ignore:

  • Subdomains, including www
  • Paths
  • Query parameters

The registered domain, public suffix, and port remain significant. Paths and query parameters also remain significant unless their options are enabled.

🔍 Example

Google scraping often returns the same page from several queries. Deduplicate the result URL before enriching domains or profiles.

When to deduplicate URLs

Deduplicate URLs before:

  • Enriching websites
  • Scraping profile pages
  • Running metadata extraction
  • Importing sitemap URLs
  • Merging Google search results
  • Building lead lists from directories

This avoids duplicate work and saves enrichment credits.

Datablist workflow

Datablist has URL-aware Smart matching in the Duplicates Finder. The processor changes comparison only and does not rewrite the stored URL.

Use it after the Google Multi Queries Scraper, Sitemap Scraper, or Website AI Scraper.

See the tested settings in the list deduplication guide and all URL options in the data matching guide.

Choose between duplicate pages and duplicate domains

For a list of product pages, keep paths and query parameters significant until you know which components are redundant. example.com/products/desk and example.com/products/chair are different records even though their domains match. Likewise, example.com/product?id=101 and example.com/product?id=202 can identify different products. Ignoring all query parameters would collapse that distinction along with tracking parameters.

For a company list with one account per website, ignoring paths can be useful: example.com/about and example.com/contact become candidates for the same account. Review subdomains separately. shop.example.com and support.example.com may be parts of one company, while hosted customer subdomains can represent different organizations.

Keep the original URL property. Choose the comparison settings for the row's meaning, inspect the groups, and decide which URL to retain. A matching score does not confirm that two URLs redirect to the same live page.