Conflating entities using a persistent entity index

A method being performed by one or more computing devices including at least one processor, the method for maintaining a persistent entity index, the method comprising:

• receiving information about an entity from a plurality of sources;
• detecting a match between the information about the entity from at least two of the plurality of sources;
• aggregating the information about the entity from the at least two matching sources;
• and
• storing the aggregated information in the persistent entity index.

A system comprising:

• an entity conflation engine having one or more processors and one or more computer-readable storage media;
• a data store coupled with the entity conflation engine,
• wherein the entity conflation engine:
• receives information about an entity, the information including at least one attribute associated with the entity;
• matches the entity with one or more existing entities in a persistent entity index, the persistent entity index having entity-attribute pairs associated therewith;
• aggregates the at least one attribute associated with the entity with the entity-attribute pairs associated with the persistent entity index;
• and
• ranks the entity with respect to the one or more matched existing entities using a machine-learning approach.