A method for normalizing raw titles to canonical titles is described. The method includes designating a set of canonical titles, generating a set of n-grams for each canonical title, assigning a set of attributes to each n-gram, assigning a set of labels to each of the attributes, and storing the labeled canonical title and labeled n-grams in a database. In some examples, a new title may be mapped to an existing canonical title in the database by generating a set of n-grams for the new title, looking up the n-grams in the database of canonical titles, retrieving the set of labels assigned to n-grams in the database that match n-grams from the new title, and assigning those labels to the corresponding attributes of the new title. The new title may then be mapped to a canonical title on the basis of similarly labeled attributes.
