LinkedIn is one of the most popular professional social networking sites, with over 800 million members worldwide. As a platform built around making connections and furthering careers, LinkedIn provides users with a powerful search tool to find other professionals and companies. This allows you to search for potential clients, partners, employees, and more.
With such an extensive search function, a natural question arises – can you see your LinkedIn search history? Do the searches you perform on LinkedIn get tracked and recorded somewhere for you to review later? Let’s take a closer look at whether LinkedIn search history can be accessed.
Does LinkedIn Track Your Searches?
The short answer is yes, LinkedIn does keep track of searches performed by registered members while logged into their accounts. LinkedIn records and stores search history data for all signed-in users. This allows them to analyze search patterns and improve the search algorithm over time.
Some key facts about LinkedIn’s search tracking include:
- Search history is linked to your account profile. LinkedIn ties the searches you make to your unique user ID.
- Data is retained indefinitely. LinkedIn holds onto the search history data for as long as you have an active account.
- All searches are tracked, both broad and specific. Any name, company, title or keyword you look up is logged.
- Information like connections in results is also tracked. LinkedIn keeps data on whether your connections appear in the search results.
The search tracking applies to any search queries done while signed into your LinkedIn account on the website or mobile app. Any search performed in incognito or private browsing with your account open will also get recorded.
Why Does LinkedIn Track Search History?
LinkedIn tracks and logs search history for a couple of reasons:
- Improve relevancy of results – Analyzing search patterns allows LinkedIn to better understand what types of results users are looking for. This data helps them fine-tune the search algorithm.
- Personalize recommendations – Your search history provides insights into your interests and professional needs. LinkedIn uses this to customize content suggestions.
- Security monitoring – Search data can be analyzed to detect suspicious account activity related to scraping, hacking, or spamming.
- Advertising targeting – Understanding user search behavior allows LinkedIn to better target sponsored content and ads.
So in short, LinkedIn tracks your search activity primarily to enhance their platform’s performance and personalization for you as a user. The data is used internally and not shared with any external parties.
How to View Your LinkedIn Search History
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not provide users with the ability to directly access their historical search data. While they definitely keep this activity log, there is currently no self-service way for users to view their personal LinkedIn search history.
LinkedIn does not expose any settings or tools in the platform to look back through your search logs. You cannot see the various keywords and names you have searched for while signed into your account. No search history list or report is available.
This unavailability applies equally to LinkedIn’s website and mobile apps. There is no built-in feature to retrieve your search history on either platform interface. The data is maintained privately by LinkedIn for analysis and improvement of their own algorithms.
Why Doesn’t LinkedIn Allow Access?
LinkedIn likely limits access to search history for a few reasons:
- Privacy – Search queries can sometimes be sensitive, so showing full history may raise privacy concerns.
- Misuse concerns – Publicly surfacing search data could enable scraping or harassment.
- Clutter – Search history logs are usually long and messy, providing low value to users.
- Feature cost – Developing and maintaining a search history viewer would have engineering costs.
Giving users access to search data would require building and supporting new product capabilities, while providing little upside to the core LinkedIn value proposition. As such, it is not a high priority feature for them to take on.
How to See Your Search History Workaround
While not ideal, there is a bit of a workaround that can provide some visibility into your past LinkedIn searches. The workaround relies on your web browser’s history functionality.
View Browser History
Major web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all keep records of websites visited and searches made from their address bar. If you primarily use LinkedIn search from your browser, some queries may show up there.
For example, in Chrome:
- Click the 3 vertical dots in the top right corner
- Select “History” from the menu
- Review the list of visited sites and search terms, filtering as needed
Any LinkedIn searches done without navigating away from the tab may not show up, so this is an imperfect solution. But it can reconstruct at least a portion of your activity.
Try Advanced Browser History Apps
For more powerful reconstruction of your web history, try specialist tools like:
- Search My History – Browser extension that expands on built-in history search.
- Search My Browsing History – Software for visualizing past browser usage.
These tools index and archive your browsing behavior in expanded ways, offering advanced filtering and exports. So you may be able to reconstruct LinkedIn search activity done from your browser more completely using these apps.
Best Practices for LinkedIn Searching
Since your LinkedIn search history is obscured but still tracked, it’s good to keep some best practices in mind when searching:
- Be logged out for sensitive searches – Any search where you want privacy, first log out of your LinkedIn account.
- Use incognito mode – Perform searches in an incognito browser tab to avoid local history tracking.
- Be thoughtful about contacts – Remember connections may see your name when searched.
- Clear browser history periodically – Delete your local browser history to remove LinkedIn searches.
Following these tips will minimize the amount of tracked search data and give you more control over your privacy.
Other LinkedIn Tracking
Beyond search history, LinkedIn does track and analyze other aspects of user activity, such as:
- Page visits
- Content clicks
- Ad interactions
- Profile views
- Shares and reactions
Data is anonymized and aggregated before being sold to advertisers or market researchers. Individual user data is not shared externally.
Is LinkedIn Tracking Invasive?
LinkedIn’s tracking is similar to other major social networks. While pervasive, it powers functionality people expect today. As long as data use aligns with the privacy policy, it is generally accepted.
However, settings are available to limit data collection if desired, providing users control over their information.
Other Professional Network Search Options
If you want to evaluate alternatives to LinkedIn that may offer more transparent search tracking, options include:
Xing has core professional network features like profiles, job boards, and search. It has a stronger presence in Europe vs North America.
Viadeo
Viadeo also provides professional connection and talent search features. It is most heavily used in France.
GitHub Jobs
GitHub’s job board has powerful tech-focused search. But the network component is minimal.
Industry Forums
Industry-specific forums focused on careers can also be great for making connections. Search is typically public.
Conclusion
To summarize, while LinkedIn does track and log all searches done while logged into your account, this history data is not readily accessible to users. LinkedIn currently provides no self-service way to view or retrieve your past search activity on the platform. The best you can do is reconstruct fragments of searches from your web browser history. For privacy reasons, it’s best to perform sensitive searches logged out or in incognito mode.