id you know that you could appear on someone’s list of people who viewed your profile even if you never actually visited their profile? It’s surprising, I know. I’ll explain how you can test this yourself.
Recently, I discovered a potentially misleading tactic on LinkedIn. It seems LinkedIn may be using this technique to encourage more users to sign up for premium memberships. This approach is quite perplexing and disappointing once you confirm it.
So what exactly is happening? Have you ever searched for someone on LinkedIn, scrolled through the search results, and then logged off? If you later find that this person has either viewed your profile or sent you a connection request, it’s not just a coincidence! LinkedIn might have notified them that you viewed their profile, even though you only viewed the search results without clicking on their profile. It’s quite shocking, and this isn’t limited to premium users; it affects everyone. Premium users only see more than the latest five people who viewed their profile.
How did I discover this? I was preparing for an interview and searched for the interviewer’s name to see their title on LinkedIn. The search results highlighted one person at the top and listed others below in less prominent positions. Since this wasn’t the person I was looking for, I didn’t click on their profile and simply moved on. About an hour later, I logged back into LinkedIn and found that this person had viewed my profile! This was confusing because I didn’t know them and we had no mutual connections. Did they get notified that they appeared in my search results? I started researching this issue and found several posts on Reddit discussing the same problem. It turns out that when a profile is highlighted at the top of search results, LinkedIn marks it as a profile view, even if you didn’t actually visit their profile. They refer to this as a “mini profile,” which doesn’t make much sense. Consequently, anyone whose profile appeared at the top of my search results was notified that I viewed their profile!
I tested this with a friend, and the same thing happened. My friend received a notification as if I had viewed their profile. My friend was not even a premium user.
My question is: did everyone know about this? Am I the only one who finds this misleading, or is it a concern for others as well? To avoid unintentionally misleading someone into thinking I viewed their profile when I did not, the only solution seems to be using LinkedIn’s private mode, which unfortunately prevents me from seeing who actually viewed my profile.
It just doesn’t make sense and just doesn’t seem right!
Screenshot below to refer to which part in search results is counted as profile view.
