LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million users worldwide. As a professional networking platform, LinkedIn profiles showcase a user’s work experience, skills, education, accomplishments, and more. Naturally, LinkedIn members are interested in knowing who has viewed or looked at their profile. This allows them to see who is interested in connecting with them professionally.
While LinkedIn does not provide information about who has viewed your profile directly, there are some methods using LinkedIn’s premium features that give you insight into who is looking at your profile.
Does LinkedIn tell you who views your profile?
No, LinkedIn does not directly show regular members who views their profile. LinkedIn previously had a feature called Who’s Viewed Your Profile that allowed you to see who visited your profile within the last 90 days. However, this feature was removed in 2014 and currently only paid Premium Account holders can see limited profile viewer information.
Why did LinkedIn remove profile view tracking?
LinkedIn decided to remove the ability for regular members to see who viewed their profiles for the following reasons:
- Privacy concerns – Members did not like that everyone could see who viewed their profile.
- Prevention of misuse – The feature was being misused by some members such as stalking or harassment.
- Promote Premium feature – LinkedIn wanted to make seeing your profile viewers an exclusive Premium feature to encourage upgrades.
So currently the only way to see any information about who has looked at your profile is to upgrade to a Premium account.
What LinkedIn profile viewing information is available with Premium accounts?
LinkedIn Premium accounts provide the ability to see limited information on who has viewed your profile recently, including:
Profile view timestamps
Premium members can see timestamps of when someone viewed their profile. This gives you an idea of when interest was shown in your profile.
Viewer locations
You can see the geographical region where viewers are located, like a particular country or city. Note that you cannot see the specific identity of the viewer.
Viewer companies and titles
The company name and job title of profile viewers may be visible but not their name. This helps provide context on who is looking at your profile.
Viewer industry
The general industry of profile viewers is also shown, such as technology, financial services, healthcare, etc.
Profile view frequency
You can analyze the frequency and intervals at which viewers check out your profile. This indicates recurring interest in your profile.
What profile viewing data is not visible with Premium?
While Premium provides some profile viewer insights, there are still restrictions on what data is available. You cannot see:
- Viewer names or specific identities
- What content or sections they viewed
- Viewer’s Linkedin activity like messaging
- Which profiles viewer came from
- View duration and engagement
So while Premium offers more visibility than regular accounts, full transparency on who views your profile is still limited.
How to see who viewed your LinkedIn Profile with Premium
If you upgrade to a Premium account, here are the steps to see who has viewed your LinkedIn profile:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile page
- Click on the ‘Me’ icon at the top right and select ‘Viewers of this profile’
- Here you can analyze timestamped information on your latest profile viewers
- Switch between the ‘Timeline’ and ‘Analytics’ tabs for detailed viewing data
The Timeline view shows you a chronological list of profile visitors while the Analytics tab lets you break down your viewer demographics like locations, titles, and industries.
LinkedIn Recruiter profile view tracking
LinkedIn Recruiter accounts have even greater visibility into profile views than Premium. Recruiters can see:
- Exact timestamp of views
- Number of profile section views
- View duration and engagement
- Previous profiles the viewer visited
- Viewer’s LinkedIn activity after viewing a profile
This expanded viewing data allows recruiters to analyze engagement levels and context for profile visitors. However, recruiter accounts are only available for talent scouting professionals.
Other ways to get insights on LinkedIn profile viewers
While you cannot see exactly who looks at your LinkedIn profile, there are some other signals that provide clues:
Profile view notifications
You will get email or in-app notifications whenever someone views your profile. This at least tells you someone looked at your profile recently.
Connection requests
If people view your profile and then send a connection invitation shortly after, there is a good chance they were profile visitors.
Messages
Receiving InMail messages after a surge of profile views means interested viewers reached out.
Content engagement
Increased likes, comments, clicks on your profile or activity on your posts may come from visitors.
Search analytics
Your profile may appear in searches related to your skills, employer, college, etc.
So while you cannot directly see every profile viewer, these signals provide some useful context on who is looking and engaging with your profile and content.
Should LinkedIn bring back profile view tracking for all members?
There are good arguments on both sides for whether LinkedIn should restore the ability for all members to see who looks at their profile:
Arguments for profile view tracking
- Allows better professional networking and engagement
- Provides awareness of who is interested in you
- Encourages more openness and transparency
- Gives users full access to their own profile data
- Reduces need for Premium upgrades just for this feature
Arguments against profile view tracking
- Invades privacy of casual profile viewers
- Enables stalking, harassment, misuse of data
- Discourages open professional browsing
- Goes against hiring fairness by revealingviewer identities
- Provides competitive advantage for Premium subscriptions
There are merits to both perspectives on the issue. Ultimately it is LinkedIn’s decision as they aim to balance user transparency, privacy, and premium value.
Conclusion
In summary, here are the key points on whether you can see who views your LinkedIn profile:
- LinkedIn does not show regular members exactly who looks at their profile anymore
- The only way to see limited profile viewer insights is with a Premium account
- Premium accounts show viewer locations, companies, titles, industries but not identities
- Recruiter accounts provide the most profile viewing transparency
- There are pros and cons to LinkedIn bringing back profile view tracking
- Other signals like notifications and engagement can provide clues on profile viewers
While complete visibility into your LinkedIn profile visitors is not currently available, the premium features and other indicators still provide useful recruiting and networking insights. So if you are curious about who is looking at your profile, upgrading to premium may help reveal more of the picture.