How our matching works | SameScent

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How our matching works

What "similar" means here

Two fragrances can share bergamot, musk and vanilla and still smell nothing alike. So we don't match on shared ingredients alone. We look at the overall character: how a fragrance opens, how it develops, how it dries down, its dominant accords and family, and whether experienced reviewers and fragrance communities widely consider two fragrances similar.

How a pairing gets published

  1. We collect the original's published notes and family.
  2. We look for independent sources (buying guides, reviewers, enthusiast communities) that name the alternative.
  3. We record each source and set an evidence level: widely recommended (several independent sources) or some supporting evidence (one or two credible sources, or clear caveats).
  4. Weak or contradictory pairings are held back for review and not shown as alternatives.

How we rank alternatives

First by the strength of evidence for overall similarity, then by how closely the opening, heart and dry-down are described as matching, then performance where credible evidence exists, and only then price and value. Affiliate commission is never a ranking factor. We don't show similarity scores, because there's no defensible way to measure them yet.

The Fragrance Finder

When AI search is switched on, your words go to a language model on our server, never directly from your browser with a key. We first narrow the catalogue to likely candidates using keyword matching, then the model interprets your request (named fragrances, budget, notes, mood, occasion, season, who it's for) and chooses only from those catalogue entries. It can't add products, notes, prices or links: everything you see is rendered from our own catalogue. When AI isn't available, the Finder says so and matches your words against the catalogue instead.

Stories and facts

Notes and families come from published information cited by our sources. Scent stories and "what you'll notice" are our editorial interpretation of those facts, written to help you imagine a fragrance, not promises of how it will smell on you or how people will react.