Signals is how you prospect on what is happening right now, rather than on a fixed set of criteria. You subscribe to a signal, Topo watches the market for it on a schedule, and the people or companies that match land in a list automatically for as long as the signal runs.

This is a new capability. Before, Topo could only query a database for what was true at the moment you searched. Signals watches continuously.

Signals or Lead Search?

The two do different jobs. Use whichever fits the question you are asking.

Filters that used to approximate signal behaviour inside Lead Search have moved here. In Lead Search they were a one-off snapshot of the database. As a signal they are live.

The signals available

My company

Competition

Jobs

Technologies

Ecosystem

Others

Creating a signal

Go to the Signals page and choose the signal you want. The wizard then walks you through:

1. Signal criteria — what has to happen for the signal to fire. This is where you enter the job titles, keywords, technologies or LinkedIn URLs the signal watches. Each signal has one thing it needs before it can run, listed in the table above.

2. Watch a list you already have (optional) — instead of watching the whole market, point the signal at one of your existing lists and Topo checks it for you. Hiring and technology signals watch account lists, and Started a new role watches contact lists. Lists that don't fit the signal you picked are greyed out. Up to 1,000 entries per list.

3. Audience filters — who actually gets imported once the signal fires. A hiring signal might detect any company posting a sales role, while your audience filters keep only the ones in your industry and size range. These are optional, but they are what keeps a list clean.

4. Preview — a sample of what the signal would have caught recently, so you can sanity-check your criteria before spending anything. Each row carries a confidence level (high, medium or low) and a link to the source behind the match, so you can open it and check it yourself.

5. Detection confidence (technology signals) — the minimum confidence a detection has to reach before it lands in your list. Set it high for a tight list you can send to today, lower it to see everything and sort it yourself. A technology signal can track several technologies at once, and each match shows the evidence behind it, such as the job posts that gave it away.

6. List type — whether the list holds people or companies. Company signals can import the companies themselves, or the people who work at them.

7. Daily cap and estimated cost — see below.

8. Launch — Who owns what this signal brings? starts filled in with you. Pick one member, or several to share the records in round robin, one account at a time. Pick Unassigned to leave them without an owner until someone works them. On a contact signal that is linked to a sequence template, Unassigned sends each contact to the sender who gets that contact in the sequence. Contacts and accounts that already have an owner keep that owner, and they follow the assignment rule under Settings → Contacts & accounts → Assignment. On Account first, a contact whose account already has an owner goes to that owner. A signal that is already running shows Unassigned until you pick members and save. The signal then starts straight away, runs its first check immediately, and imports matches it has already found, up to your daily cap, so the list doesn't start empty.

Keyword matching

Keyword fields match only the exact keywords you enter. "Salesforce" does not match "SFDC". Add several keywords, and their variants, to widen the search. On Keywords and Keywords in Job Post, the info icon next to the field explains this. Click a keyword, then Generate more, and Topo suggests alternatives.

The daily cap

Every signal has a cap, and setting it is not optional. It is the maximum number of leads the signal may import in a day.

• If more people or companies qualify on a given day than your cap allows, you get up to your cap and no more.

• If fewer qualify, you get fewer. The cap is a ceiling, not a target.

LinkedIn signals run weekly rather than daily. That covers follower signals and keyword signals: a brand, competitor, partner, customer or event mention, and posts about a keyword. A keyword check reads posts published since the last complete check, and brings back at most 50 new people per signal, across its keywords, before your audience filters and daily cap. Job posts that mention a keyword are not part of that weekly schedule. That's deliberate: it keeps activity on LinkedIn at a pace that won't get accounts flagged.

For a company signal set to import people, you set two numbers instead: how many companies to take per day, and how many people to import at each one.

The cap replaces the old auto-import schedule that used to sit on a list. Volume is now controlled on the signal itself.

The list your signal feeds

Creating a signal also creates its list, named after the signal. It is a contact list for a people signal and an account list for a company signal.

The list is live: new matches keep arriving while the signal runs. You can link it to a sequence like any other list, and leads will enrol as they land. You can also have imported leads enrolled into a sequence automatically as part of the signal setup.

Email and phone enrichment are each a toggle on the signal, so you only spend credits on what you need.

Managing a running signal

• Pause a signal to stop it importing for a while, then resume it. The list stays where it is.

• Edit its criteria, caps, filters or enrichment at any time. Changing the criteria resets the signal's baseline, so it starts watching afresh.

• Duplicate a signal to run a variant. This is also how you switch between importing people and importing companies, since that cannot be changed on an existing signal.

• If a check fails, Topo tries once more about an hour later. If that fails too, the next check waits a day.

• Archive a signal when you are done. It never runs again, and the list it built stays.

Seeing what a signal found

The All events tab on the Signals page shows everything your signals picked up, most recent first, and what happened to each one:

• Found — detected, not yet processed.

• Imported — added to the list. Test in a playbook on that row creates a test case from the occurrence. One matching playbook opens in the editor. Several asks Test in which playbook? None says No playbook is triggered by this signal yet.

• Already in list — a match you already had, so it was not imported twice.

• Expired — the event aged out before it could be imported.

• Rejected — detected, but filtered out by your audience filters, your exclusions, or because it could not be enriched.

A signal that is finding plenty but importing little is usually a sign your audience filters are tighter than you meant, or your cap is low.

If you were using auto-import

Lists that were set to import automatically keep everything they already hold, but no new leads flow into them. If you want leads arriving on their own, that is now a signal.

📄 How does list monitoring work?

📄 Understanding the Lists page

📄 Lead Search Filters