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The search_type parameter switches the Search API between general web search and specialized search modes. Set search_type="people" to invoke People Search and retrieve professional information about individuals such as names, job titles, and companies.

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Overview

People Search lets you query Perplexity’s index for professionals, employees, and public figures. Use it when your application needs to:
  • Look up a specific person’s professional background
  • Find employees at a company by role or title
  • Identify professionals in a particular field or location
  • Research leadership teams or organizational structures
Pass search_type="people" on a standard Search API request to route the query through the People Search backend. All other Search API parameters (e.g. max_results, max_tokens_per_page) continue to apply.

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Request Example

The example below finds engineering leadership at a specific company. 
from perplexity import Perplexity

client = Perplexity()

response = client.search.create(
    query="VP of Engineering at Stripe",
    search_type="people",
    max_results=10
)

for result in response.results:
    print(f"{result.title}: {result.url}")

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Query Tips

For best results, include identifying details in the query:
ApproachExample query
Name + company”Find John Smith who works at Google”
Role + company”Head of Design at Figma”
Role + location”Marketing directors in San Francisco”
Role + field”Machine learning researchers at Stanford”
For agentic workflows that need the model to autonomously decide when to look up people, use the people_search tool with the Agent API instead.