Why does my Clay people search return fewer leads than expected?
The Clay help pages give 4 common reasons. The first to rule out: People whose profiles are private are left out, so a search can return fewer people than work at a company.
What causes it?
People whose profiles are private are left out, so a search can return fewer people than work at a company.
In the Clay help:
Profiles set to private on LinkedIn are excluded.
Guide: Finding companies and people in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.Someone new to a role or to the web may not be in the data yet, so they can be missing from results for a while.
In the Clay help:
The profile may also not yet be in the dataset.
Guide: Finding companies and people in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.Search results come from a snapshot, so recent job changes can take time to show and counts can lag behind real life.
In the Clay help:
People search data reflects snapshot data, which can lag behind real-time LinkedIn changes.
Guide: Finding companies and people in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.A title search that matches the words you typed can leave out synonyms and similar job titles, so people with differently worded titles can be missing.
In the Clay help:
Synonyms and similar titles are excluded.
Find People in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.
How do I check it myself?
Loosen one filter at a time and rerun the search to see which filter removes the most people.
In the Clay help:
Try broadening one filter at a time to diagnose where results drop off.
Guide: Finding companies and people in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.Check the cap on people per company, since a low cap limits results even at large companies.
In the Clay help:
Set the maximum number of people to return per company (up to 100).
Find People in Clay - Clay Docs, read 2026-11-12.
How does Clay work with Feder?
- Connect Clay to Feder and it joins your Interest apps.
- When you connect Clay, Feder checks the connection straight away and shows Connected only when that check passes. If a reading cannot be taken later, Feder shows it as not read, never as zero.
Some numbers are too quiet to judge daily, such as a form filled in a few times a week. Until there is enough of your own history to judge a change, Feder says it is still learning and scores nothing, rather than guessing.
See whether you can trust the numbers in Clay, one of your Interest apps. Feder only reads. It never changes anything in Clay.
What else goes wrong with these numbers?
- Why did the number of leads in my Clay table drop?Clay
- Why did my Clay table stop adding new leads?Clay
- Why did Google Analytics stop collecting data?Google Analytics
- Why aren't my key events showing in Google Analytics?Google Analytics
- Why does Google Analytics show (not set)?Google Analytics
See every question.
Where do these answers come from?
Every cause and check on this page comes from the Clay help pages, quoted above with the date we read them. Last reviewed 2026-11-12. We read them again by 2027-11-12. If one changes, this page changes or comes down.