Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for determining similarities between businesses. One example method generally includes receiving a similarity query and receiving transaction data associated with a plurality of businesses for comparing the plurality of businesses. The method further includes generating a set of vectors representing the plurality of businesses based on the transaction data and generating a set of compact vectors based on the vectors by applying a dimensionality reduction technique. The method further includes generating based on the set of compact vectors, a similarity index and determining a response to the similarity query using the similarity index.