📋 Available on: Startup, Growth, Enterprise, Agency, and Custom plans. Not available on legacy Starter, Pro, or Free plans
Archive's Creator Search feature helps you find and analyze content creators across social platforms. This visual search system makes it easy to discover creators who match your brand's style and aesthetic.
How Creator Search Works
Creator Search is designed primarily as a visual search system that focuses on content themes, presentation style, and aesthetics rather than examining text-based elements. The system evaluates two primary visual signals across a creator's content:
Content themes and formats
Presentation style and aesthetics
When using the "Search similar creator" functionality, we actually pick a single photo/video of a creator and then use it to find similar creators. We select the one that fits best to the text query.
Note: Creator Search only indexes creators with 1,000 or more followers/subscribers. Creators below this threshold will not appear in search results.
Searching Creators by Content
Basic Search Process
Navigate to the left sidebar and hover over the tab, then click on Creator Search.
Choose your desired platform for the creator accounts you'd like to see
Instagram
TikTok
Input the type of creator you're looking for in the search field. You can search by:
Content topics (e.g., "fitness," "beauty," "travel")
Creator characteristics (e.g., "micro-influencer," "lifestyle blogger")
Specific niches or industries
Click the Search! button to generate your results.
To narrow down your results and make your search more specific, use the Filters option. You can filter by:
Social Profiles - Filter by specific social media platforms or account types.
Engagement - Set minimum or maximum engagement rate ranges.
Followers - Define follower count ranges (e.g., micro-influencers vs. macro-influencers).
Location - Search for creators in specific countries, regions, or cities. Results use canonical location data normalized across the platform.
Verification - Show only verified accounts or include unverified creators.
Gender - Filter results by creator gender demographics.
Email - Show only creators who have email contact information available.
Age - Filter by creator age ranges or demographics.
Biography - Search for keywords inside a creator's bio text (see below).
Label - Filter by creator labels previously assigned in your organization.
Vetting List - Show or hide creators from specific vetting lists.
Audience Status - Filter by the audience status set on a creator profile.
Relationship Status - Filter by your existing relationship with a creator.
Privacy - Filter by account privacy setting (public or private).
Phone Number - Show only creators who have a phone number on their profile.
Profile Type - Filter by the type of Instagram Professional account (Creator, Pro Service, Brand, Venue, etc.)
Category - Filter by the category set on a creator's Instagram profile (e.g., Beauty, Fitness, Food, Fashion, Travel).
You can add any creator that matches what you're looking for to a vetting list by clicking on the "+ List" button. This helps you organize potential collaborators for future campaigns.
Note: Reels are visually distinguished in the content preview with a Reel icon, so you can quickly identify the format that matters most for evaluation.
Searching Creators by Filters
Smart Defaults
Smart Defaults give your first search a built-in quality floor so the initial results skip very small or low-engagement profiles that brands rarely pick. When the Smart defaults toggle in the Filters panel is on, Archive automatically adds two baseline filters as visible, editable chips the first time you leave the splash screen (by adding a filter or running a search):
Followers ≥ 10,000
Engagement rate ≥ 0.5%
A few things to know:
The two chips behave like any other filter — edit the values or remove them whenever you want.
Your own values always take precedence. If you've already set a followers or engagement-rate filter, Smart Defaults won't overwrite it.
Turning the toggle off removes only the untouched default chips — anything you edited stays in place.
Defaults re-apply on each new search by design. The toggle is an override for the current search, not a permanent setting.
Setting Up Your Filter Search
Hover over the left tab and click on Creator Search.
Choose your desired platform where those creators accounts should show from the dropdown menu:
Instagram
TikTok
Add the first filter by clicking Add Filter and selecting from the available options:
Social Profiles - Filter by specific social media platforms or account types.
Engagement - Set minimum or maximum engagement rate ranges.
Followers - Define follower count ranges (e.g., micro-influencers vs. macro-influencers).
Location - Search for creators in specific countries, regions, or cities. Results use canonical location data normalized across the platform.
Verification - Show only verified accounts or include unverified creators.
Gender - Filter results by creator gender demographics.
Email - Show only creators who have email contact information available.
Age - Filter by creator age ranges or demographics.
Biography - Search for keywords inside a creator's bio text (see below).
Label - Filter by creator labels previously assigned in your organization.
Vetting List - Show or hide creators from specific vetting lists.
Audience Status - Filter by the audience status set on a creator profile.
Relationship Status - Filter by your existing relationship with a creator.
Privacy - Filter by account privacy setting (public or private).
Phone Number - Show only creators who have a phone number on their profile.
Profile Type - Filter by the type of Instagram Professional account (Creator, Pro Service, Brand, Venue, etc.)
Category - Filter by the category set on a creator's Instagram profile (e.g., Beauty, Fitness, Food, Fashion, Travel).
Once the list refreshes, add more filters to narrow down the list and refine your results further. You can combine multiple filters to create very specific search criteria.
If you're looking for specific content, you can add a keyword in the search bar. This combines content-based search with your selected filters for even more targeted results.
You can add any creator that matches what you're looking for to a vetting list by clicking on the "+ List" button. This helps you organize potential collaborators for future campaigns.
Searching Creators by Images
Hover over the left tab and click on Creator Search.
Click on the camera icon and drag and drop the image you want Archive to search similar content with.
Once the list refreshes, add filters to narrow down the list and refine your results further. You can combine multiple filters to create very specific search criteria.
If you're looking for specific content, you can add a keyword in the search bar. This combines content-based search with your selected filters for even more targeted results.
You can add any creator that matches what you're looking for to a vetting list by clicking on the "+ List" button. This helps you organize potential collaborators for future campaigns.
Customizing Creator Cards
You can choose which information appears on creator cards in your search results, depending on what's most useful for your review process.
Click the eye icon in the top navigation bar (next to Reset and Save View).
In the dropdown panel, toggle the fields you want to show or hide on each card:
Bio
Performance Metrics
Audience Data
Vetting Lists
Relationship Status
Your selection is saved automatically and applies to all subsequent search results.
Finding Similar Creators
To find creators with similar visual styles:
From the results you got, select a creator's profile or individual content as your reference point
Click on the Search similar creator icon to find visually similar content creators
Exporting Creator Data
You can export creator data directly from Creator Search — both during an active search and from within a Vetting List — using the bulk action bar. Select the creators you want, then click Export CSV in the action bar at the bottom of the screen.
You can also export an entire Vetting List at once using the three dots (...) menu on the list.
For full details on how to export and what columns are included, see CSV Export Options in Archive.
Reset the Search
Click on the Reset button at the top right corner of your screen.
NOTE: We can't retrieve content from creators because we are not actively tracking them (except for those explicitly connected or added to your account). Instead, we track brands and collect posts where creators mention the brand or use a specific hashtag. In other words, we don't have a fixed date for how far back we retrieve content. It depends on how long we've been tracking the influencers or brands.
FAQ
How does Creator Search find matches?
Creator Search is a visual search system. It matches creators by the visual signals in their content — themes, formats, presentation style, and aesthetics — not by captions, transcripts, follower count, or engagement. Those metrics are available as filters, but they don't influence the visual matching itself.
How does "Search similar creator" work?
It picks the single reference image or video that best fits your query — from the creator or post you selected — and finds creators with visually similar content. It doesn't analyze the creator's full catalog; it works from that one reference.
Can I search by keywords that appear in the content?
Yes. If a keyword shows up visually in the content — a story title, a sticker, on-screen text — Creator Search can detect and surface it.
Will it still find content if my keyword isn't a perfect match?
Usually, yes. Creator Search sorts rather than filters: less-relevant results still appear, just further down. The most visually relevant matches come first, then progressively less relevant ones — nothing is excluded outright.
Why does the creator count differ from my Social Listening or Creators page?
Creator Search only includes creators with 1,000+ followers. Creators below that are tracked in Social Listening and your Creators CRM but excluded from Creator Search, so the counts won't always match.