Two subanalytic subsets of R^n are called s-equivalent at a common point P if the Hausdorff distance between their intersections with the sphere centered at P of radius r vanishes to order > s when r tends to 0. We proved that every s-equivalence class of a closed semianalytic set contains a semialgebraic representative of the same dimension. Results on approximation of subanalytic sets under suitable assumptions were obtained as well. (joint work with E.Fortuna, L.Wilson).