Discrepancy in Company Counts in Clay's Software and IT Filter

Siddhant B. · 2025-12-09T13:20:52.077Z

Why does Clay's find companies show ~30k companies when I limit the industry to "Software and IT" vs when I do not specify anything? I would have thought it would have returned a larger number.

Discrepancy in Company Counts in Clay's Software and IT Filter | Clay

8 comments

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Clay Support
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When you filter for "Software and IT," you're narrowing the results to only companies in that specific industry, which is why you see around 30k. Without any filters, the search includes all industries, so the total number of companies is much larger. The dataset is built from multiple providers and is self-reported, so filtering by industry reduces the pool to just those matching your criteria. [1] [2] [3]
Clay Support
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Was that helpful?
Siddhant B.
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No
Clay Support
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I'm sorry that didn't help. I'll connect you with a human agent who can assist you further.
Clay Support
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Our support team has got your message and we'll get back to you soon! We're currently outside of our standard office hours (9 AM to 9 PM EST, Monday through Friday), so it may take a little longer for us to respond.
If you’re dealing with a specific table, drop the URL below so we can help you quicker. Otherwise, someone from our team will be in touch soon!
image.png(93 kB)
Siddhant B.
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No table, any Clay company search is fine. Geography is United Kingdom.
Mitch H.
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Hey Siddhant, When you search with just "saas" in the products/services field, Clay is looking through company descriptions and product info for that keyword, which gives you ~14k companies.
When you add the "Software and IT" AI filter on top of that, it's expanding your search to ~30k because the AI has analyzed company websites and classified additional companies as being in software/IT - even if they don't explicitly mention "saas" in their product descriptions. So you're getting companies that Clay's AI identified as software/IT businesses based on what's on their websites, not just the ones that happen to use the word "saas" when describing themselves.
Basically: Products/services filter = keyword matching in descriptions. AI filter = Clay's AI classification based on what the company actually does according to their website. The AI filter is catching companies your keyword search missed. Hope this helps!
Clay Support
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We haven't heard back from you here, so we're going to go ahead and close this thread out.
Still need help here? Reply back and someone will jump back in.
Have a question thats not related to this thread? We recommend kicking off a new ticket in the support channel!

Clay Support
APP
·
·
When you filter for "Software and IT," you're narrowing the results to only companies in that specific industry, which is why you see around 30k. Without any filters, the search includes all industries, so the total number of companies is much larger. The dataset is built from multiple providers and is self-reported, so filtering by industry reduces the pool to just those matching your criteria. [1] [2] [3]
Clay Support
APP
·
·
Was that helpful?
Siddhant B.
·
·
No
Clay Support
APP
·
·
I'm sorry that didn't help. I'll connect you with a human agent who can assist you further.
Clay Support
APP
·
·
Our support team has got your message and we'll get back to you soon! We're currently outside of our standard office hours (9 AM to 9 PM EST, Monday through Friday), so it may take a little longer for us to respond.
If you’re dealing with a specific table, drop the URL below so we can help you quicker. Otherwise, someone from our team will be in touch soon!
image.png(93 kB)
Siddhant B.
·
·
No table, any Clay company search is fine. Geography is United Kingdom.
Mitch H.
·
·
Hey Siddhant, When you search with just "saas" in the products/services field, Clay is looking through company descriptions and product info for that keyword, which gives you ~14k companies.
When you add the "Software and IT" AI filter on top of that, it's expanding your search to ~30k because the AI has analyzed company websites and classified additional companies as being in software/IT - even if they don't explicitly mention "saas" in their product descriptions. So you're getting companies that Clay's AI identified as software/IT businesses based on what's on their websites, not just the ones that happen to use the word "saas" when describing themselves.
Basically: Products/services filter = keyword matching in descriptions. AI filter = Clay's AI classification based on what the company actually does according to their website. The AI filter is catching companies your keyword search missed. Hope this helps!
Clay Support
APP
·
·
We haven't heard back from you here, so we're going to go ahead and close this thread out.
Still need help here? Reply back and someone will jump back in.
Have a question thats not related to this thread? We recommend kicking off a new ticket in the support channel!