What is intent data?
Intent data is evidence that a company is actively researching a product category — content consumption, search behaviour, review-site visits or activity on your own properties. Intent data indicates which accounts are in-market now, rather than which accounts fit a profile.
Why it matters
Fit tells you who could buy. Intent tells you who is looking. A list filtered on fit alone treats a company that began evaluating last week exactly like one that renewed a competitor’s contract last month, and those two accounts deserve very different treatment.
How intent data works
- Activity is observed across publisher networks, review sites, search, and your own web properties.
- Observations are resolved to a company rather than to an individual — usually by network address, or by a logged-in identity on a partner site.
- Activity is compared against that account's own baseline, so a surge is measured against normal behaviour rather than an absolute threshold.
- Topics are mapped onto a taxonomy, so that several different phrasings of the same research can be read as one category.
The three kinds of intent data
| Type | Where it comes from | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| First-party | Your own site, docs, pricing page and product | Named accounts already engaging with you |
| Second-party | Review sites and marketplaces you have a relationship with | Accounts comparing you against named competitors |
| Third-party | Publisher and content networks across the open web | Accounts researching the category before they ever reach you |
Common mistakes
- Treating a surge as a buying decision. Intent identifies research, and research often ends in no purchase at all.
- Acting on the topic without checking fit. An account outside your ICP researching your category is still outside your ICP.
- Opening the call with the intent itself. Telling a buyer you can see what they have been reading is a poor first sentence.
- Ignoring the resolution method. Company-level resolution cannot tell you which person did the research, and treating it as though it can wastes the outreach.
Related terms
Buying signals — The dated, verifiable events Bulkdata.ai tracks alongside inferred research behaviour.