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Definition

Semantic people search

Semantic people search matches the meaning of what you ask against real job titles and profiles, instead of requiring the exact words. "Eye surgeon who owns the practice" finds ophthalmologists, retina surgeons and practice owners however they wrote their title.

Under the hood, every distinct job title is turned into a numeric representation of its meaning and stored in a vector index. A request is converted the same way and the closest titles are returned in milliseconds, each with a count of the people who hold it. The search is then built from real titles, not guesses.

The benefit is precision on the long tail. Most specific titles are held by very few people; keyword search finds only the phrasing you thought of, while semantic search finds the neighbours you did not.

Buzzlist pairs it with plain evidence: every result shows why it matched, and a keyword fallback covers the rarest titles held by one or two people. How BuzzAI uses it.

Written by Mike Berens, founder. Updated 17 September 2026.

Common questions

Does semantic search replace filters?

No. It finds the right titles; filters such as location, company size, seniority and contact availability still narrow the people.

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