Having a premium LinkedIn account unlocks several useful features, including being able to see limited information on who has viewed your profile. However, the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section doesn’t show exactly who searched for you on LinkedIn.
What LinkedIn’s premium account allows you to see
With a LinkedIn Premium account, you gain access to the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section under the My Network tab. This shows you the following information about visitors to your profile in the last 90 days:
- Their industry
- Their location (country/region)
- Their seniority level (if they have a LinkedIn account)
- The company they work for (if they have a LinkedIn account)
So you can see aggregated data about the types of people who have viewed your profile, but not their identities or LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn only shows a maximum of 500 profile views in the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section.
What doesn’t show up in the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section
Importantly, the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” data does not include:
- Who specifically searched for you by name on LinkedIn
- Who viewed your LinkedIn profile anonymously after searching
- Who viewed your public LinkedIn profile URL via Google or another search engine
LinkedIn’s premium account perks focus mostly on giving you limited analytics about who organically came across your profile while browsing LinkedIn. The data doesn’t reveal who intentionally searched for your name or profile.
Why LinkedIn doesn’t show who searched for you
LinkedIn likely avoids showing exactly who searched for you to protect user privacy and prevent misuse of the platform. For example, showing searchers could enable stalking or harassment based on who looked up someone’s profile. The aggregated view data strikes a balance between providing some helpful analytics to premium users while still maintaining privacy.
How to see who viewed your full LinkedIn profile
As mentioned above, the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section only tracks views of your public profile on LinkedIn itself, not the full profile views after clicking through from search engines or other sites.
To see more detailed data on who has viewed your full LinkedIn profile, you need to use a third-party LinkedIn tracking tool. Some popular options include:
Tool | Key Features |
---|---|
LinkedIn Profile Tracker | See viewer’s name, headline, location, company, profile photo |
Peeper | Shows anonymous/named views, locations, companies, titles |
Who.You | Full analytics on anonymous and logged-in viewers |
These tools track and reveal who specifically searched for and landed on your profile from search engines or other sites. They give you full insights beyond just LinkedIn’s truncated and anonymous “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” data.
Other ways to see who searched for you on LinkedIn
A few other options can potentially indicate when someone searched for and found you on LinkedIn:
- Being alerted when someone follows you – If someone searched for you, viewed your profile, and then chose to follow you, you’d be notified of the new follower.
- Monitoring profile update alerts – When someone searches and lands on your profile, LinkedIn may show them a prompt to update their profile photo, experience, education, etc. You can turn on notifications for when connections update their profiles.
- Watching for viewers of your posts – If someone searches you on LinkedIn and then starts engaging with your posts and articles, you may be able to deduce they originally searched for you.
However, these signals are more indirect and speculative compared to using a dedicated LinkedIn tracking tool.
Should you pay for LinkedIn Premium?
Here are some pros and cons of paying for a LinkedIn Premium account:
Pros | Cons |
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If you want to maximize the benefits of a paid LinkedIn account, it’s best to upgrade to a higher-tier Sales Navigator plan. This unlocks advanced People Search filters to find prospects, lead recommendations based on your searches, saved leads list, and other sales features.
Conclusion
While LinkedIn Premium provides some handy extras, it still doesn’t show exactly who searched for and viewed your profile. To get those specific insights, you’ll need to use a third-party tracking tool. Additionally, upgrading to LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers more benefits for sales professionals actively searching for prospects and leads.