Search filters and live counts

Overview

The search filter panel is the primary tool for defining who receives your campaign. It is organized into three sections - Company Filters, Role Filters, and Personal Filters - and displays a running count of matching leads as you refine your targeting.

Find it at: Campaigns - open any campaign in draft status - navigate to the Search step (route /campaigns/build/handoff/search).

The panel runs against a database of 280M+ contacts and 20M+ companies. Every filter you add narrows that pool, and the count at the top of the panel reflects your exact current criteria.

Before you start

• You must have a campaign in draft status. The search panel is part of the campaign build flow and is not accessible from published campaigns.
• Facet options (the lists of available values in each dropdown) load from the backend on page entry. If the panel is still loading, dropdowns will be disabled until data arrives.

How to use the search filters

Add your first filter

1. Open a campaign and proceed to the Search step.
2. The filter panel is on the left. The Company Filters section is at the top, followed by Role Filters, then Personal Filters.
3. Click any dropdown and select one or more values. The lead count at the top updates automatically after a short pause.

The lead count indicator shows one of three states:

• N Leads Found - the count is current for your active filters.
• Update Count with an orange refresh icon - your filters have changed and the count is stale. It will refresh automatically, or click the refresh icon to update immediately.
• Updating... - the count is being recalculated.

Available filters

Company Filters

| Filter | How to use | |---|---| | Current Company | Type a company name. Autocomplete suggestions appear as you type. Supports include and exclude. | | Company Industry | Select from a predefined list. Searchable. Supports include and exclude. Has AI expansion (see below). | | Company Type | Select one or more types (e.g. Private, Public, Non-profit). | | Company Headcount | Enter Min and Max employee counts as numbers. | | Headquarters Location | Type a country, state, or city. Autocomplete from supported locations. |

Role Filters

| Filter | How to use | |---|---| | Title | Type a job title. Autocomplete suggestions appear as you type. Supports include and exclude. Has AI expansion (see below). | | Function | Select one or more job functions (e.g. Engineering, Marketing). Supports include and exclude. | | Seniority | Select one or more seniority levels (e.g. Director, VP, C-Suite). Supports include and exclude. | | Years in Position | Select a bracket for time in the current role. | | Years in Company | Select a bracket for total time at the current company. | | Changed Jobs | Select a recency window (Within 1 month / 3 months / 6 months / 12 months). Defaults to "Any time" (no filter). | | Previous Company | Type a company name to target people who recently left that employer. |

Personal Filters

| Filter | How to use | |---|---| | Keywords | Type freeform keywords that must appear in the prospect's profile. Press Enter after each keyword. | | Profile Location | Type a country, state, or city. This is the person's stated location, not their employer's HQ. | | School | Type a school or university name. | | Language | Select one or more languages. |

Include vs exclude

Filters marked "Supports include and exclude" show two small checkboxes next to each option when you open the dropdown:

• The blue + checkbox includes that value in your audience.
• The orange - checkbox excludes contacts with that value from your audience.

A "Select All" row at the top of each dropdown lets you include or exclude every visible option at once.

Use AI expansion for Title and Company Industry

The Title and Company Industry fields each have a small sparkle icon next to their label. This is the AI suggest button.

1. Add at least one value to the field (include mode only - excluded values are not expanded).
2. Click the sparkle icon. It shows a spinning indicator while running.
3. The AI returns related titles or industries and adds them directly to the field.
4. A toast notification confirms how many values were added (e.g. "Added 7 similar titles") or tells you "No additional titles found" if all suggestions were already present.

The sparkle icon is greyed out until you have added at least one include value. Re-clicking it after already accepting suggestions is safe - it only ever adds values not already in the field.

Bulk paste for dropdowns

In any searchable multi-select dropdown (Company Industry, Language, and others), you can paste a newline-separated or comma-separated list of values directly into the search box. Values that match available options are added; unrecognized values are skipped and a warning toast shows how many did not match.

How it works

Live counts

Every time you change a filter, the panel fires a request to the search backend. That request runs the same query that would power a real search, but with two optimizations applied: it fetches zero documents and skips the exact total-hit count. The backend runs only the aggregation pass over the full index. This keeps the cost low enough to fire on every filter change without a noticeable delay.

The count you see is therefore consistent with what a real search would return - there is no separate "estimate" path that could disagree with the actual list.

After each filter change, the count is marked stale and a 1.5-second debounce starts. If you continue changing filters within that window, the timer resets. The count refreshes once you stop editing.

Autocomplete

When you type in a text-entry filter (Title, Current Company, Headquarters Location, etc.), suggestions are served from an in-memory index keyed by prefix. The suggestions are ranked by how commonly that value appears in the contact database, so the most-used titles and company names surface first. The suggester tolerates typos automatically, and common aliases are resolved - for example, typing "law practice" may return "Legal Services."

AI title and industry expansion

When you click the sparkle icon on the Title or Company Industry field, the backend sends your selected include values to an AI model in a single request. The model returns up to 10 related values per seed. For titles, these are synonyms, abbreviations, and closely related roles. For industries, these are sub-industries, parent categories, and alternate sector names.

The expansion is additive only - your original values are always preserved. If the expansion service is unavailable, the button shows a failure toast and your existing filters are untouched. Excluded values are never sent for expansion, so an excluded title will not silently generate a pile of additional exclusions.

Industry values returned by the AI are matched back against the list of valid options before being added. Any name the backend would not accept is silently dropped, so you cannot inject an invalid industry value through this path.

Troubleshooting and debugging

All dropdowns are disabled / show "loading"

• Cause: The filter metadata (list of valid options) has not loaded yet.
• What to check: Wait a few seconds and reload the page. If the panel stays disabled, open the browser console and look for a failed network request to the filter metadata endpoint. A 5xx from the search backend will prevent options from populating.

The lead count shows "--" and never updates

• Cause: The initial count request failed, or the form has not been changed since page load (the first count fires on the first filter change, not on mount).
• What to check: Add or change any filter value to trigger a count request. If it still shows "--" after editing, check the browser console for a failed request. A 400 response usually means the filter combination contains an invalid value.

The count updates to a very large number (millions) unexpectedly

• Cause: A very broad filter combination or no restrictive filters applied yet.
• What to check: Add more specific criteria. Company Headcount, Seniority, and a precise Title or Company name have the most impact on narrowing the count.

The sparkle (AI suggest) button is greyed out

• Cause: The Title or Company Industry field is empty. The button stays disabled until at least one value (include or exclude) has been added.
• Fix: Add at least one value to the field. Note that only include-mode values are sent for expansion - if the field contains only excluded values, clicking the button will do nothing even though it is enabled.

AI expand returns "Failed to expand titles" or "Failed to expand industries"

• Cause: The expansion service returned an error or timed out.
• What to check: The failure is non-blocking - your existing filters are unchanged. Wait a moment and try the sparkle icon again. If it fails repeatedly, the backend AI service may be degraded.

Autocomplete shows no suggestions while typing

• Cause: The suggester index for that category may be rebuilding, or the search term contains only numbers or special characters (the autocomplete index strips digits by design).
• What to check: Try a slightly different spelling. For company names containing numbers (e.g. "3M"), type the word portion only. If suggestions are empty across all fields, the suggestion service may be temporarily unavailable; the filter still works without suggestions.

Pasting values into a dropdown shows a warning toast

• Cause: One or more pasted values did not match any available option.
• What to check: The toast tells you how many values were ignored. This is expected for values outside the supported vocabulary (e.g. a custom industry name). Only values that exactly match an available option are added.

Changed Jobs filter shows "Any time" even after selecting a window

• Cause: This is correct behavior when you clear the selection back to the default. "Any time" means no recency filter is applied.

FAQ

Do the live counts include contacts already in my campaign?

No. The count reflects the total matching your filters in the Ken database, not a deduplication against your existing campaign contacts. The actual import step applies deduplication.

Why does Company Headcount not appear as a checkbox filter like the other company attributes?

Headcount is a numeric range, not a category. The filter uses Min and Max number inputs instead of checkboxes because it is not meaningful to list every possible employee count as a selectable option.

Can I exclude a value and include others in the same field at the same time?

Yes. The include and exclude checkboxes operate independently. For example, you can include "Software Development" and "Information Technology" while excluding "Staffing and Recruiting" in the Company Industry field.

Will clicking the AI suggest button replace my existing filter values?

No. The sparkle button only adds new values. Your current selections are never removed or overwritten. If all suggestions are already present, you will see "No additional titles found."

What happens if I click the AI suggest button a second time?

It deduplicates against your current filter values before adding anything. Re-clicking after already accepting suggestions is safe - it will only add values that are genuinely new.

How accurate is the lead count?

The count is computed against the same index as the actual search, using the same query logic. It will match what the search returns. The count does not account for contacts who may be opted out, unsubscribed, or already in another active campaign - those exclusions are applied at the import step.

Related articles

• People search overview
• Building a campaign audience
• Saved searches
• Import contacts into a campaign