LinkedIn is a powerhouse of B2B data, useful for many purposes, such as...
- Competitor analysis
- Industry research
- Job market research
- Networking preparation
- Investment research
- Sales and marketing prospecting
- Academic research
Shall I keep going? (Kidding, I think you get the point.)
Anyway, when you’re browsing LinkedIn for said valuable information contained on it, there are many reasons why you might not want to use your own LinkedIn account.
Best-case scenario, you deal with annoying rate limits that prevent you from accurately browsing and/or extracting any data from LinkedIn at scale.
Worst-case scenario, you risk losing your own personal LinkedIn account.
That said, have no fear...
In this article, I’ll be showing you two different ways to search on LinkedIn without using your personal account.
But first, if you’re the type that just wants to browse LinkedIn anonymously without sending notifications that you’ve viewed an individual's profile, let me start from the very basics of accomplishing that:
Browse LinkedIn anonymously using your own account
Some people don’t really care about scale or rate limits, they just care about searching or pulling data from LinkedIn anonymously a few times.
So, if that’s you, changing your profile settings on LinkedIn to no longer send said visit notifications is pretty easy.
Here's the lowdown on surfing LinkedIn incognito:
- Log into your LinkedIn Account (if you're not already logged in).
- Navigate to the “Me” icon at the top.
- Choose “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown.
- On the left side, select “Visibility.”
- In the profile & network visibility section, locate “Profile viewing options.”
Now, you'll be presented with three choices:
- Your name and headline
- Private profile characteristics (like job title and industry)
- Full private mode
The last option, full private mode, ensures that you're fully anonymous.
While the person whose profile you visited will see that someone viewed their profile, your identity will remain a mystery.
However, remember: if you choose “private profile characteristics,” you're not completely private. Details like your job title or industry might give away clues about your identity, so choose wisely!
Okay, that’s method one.
Going forward, the other two methods that follow in this article have zero requirement for you to login to LinkedIn, but they do both require public LinkedIn profiles. Let me explain why.
Public vs. private LinkedIn data
LinkedIn is a custodian of both public and private data, governed by individual user settings.
Public data is the information that users willingly showcase on their profiles, accessible to anyone with internet access. This includes names, a summarization or description of themselves, titles, companies, and career history.
Private data, on the other hand, is accessible only to connections or within the LinkedIn network, encompassing details like personal contact information or specific post interactions.
Extracting public data is generally straightforward and is often sanctioned through LinkedIn's terms, or achieved via search engines and other B2B data tools like Proxycurl (more on that later).
However, extracting private data treads on murky waters, and is not advised. We only work with public LinkedIn data, and we suggest you do the same.
Search LinkedIn without an account by using Google
If the LinkedIn profile is a public profile, you should be able to Google it and still see quite a bit of the data available on the profile without logging in.
So, for example, let’s Google myself, “Colton Randolph LinkedIn” in Incognito mode and logged out and see what comes up:
First result and an excerpt, now let’s click on the profile:
Not bad.
A pretty significant amount of information is available, but again, this is only if the LinkedIn profile in context has public appearance settings.
Another con of this method is the fact you'll have to deal with a lot of annoying CAPTCHAs and attempts to get you to login if you plan on doing this to more than a couple of LinkedIn accounts.
Okay, now I'd like to take this a step further and show you a better way to do this, particularly at scale--but it’ll also provide you with a richer level of data than method two.
Search LinkedIn at scale with Proxycurl
Proxycurl is a B2B data provider that scrapes public people and companies on LinkedIn for you, and provides it to you in a convenient format. Specifically, an API.
If you’re not aware, an API is like a fast food menu for data. With our different API endpoints you can search for and extract all kinds of B2B data.
Essentially, Proxycurl does all of the complex work and scraping for you; you just need to implement the data.
Our Person Search Endpoint is what you want to use to search for people on LinkedIn. Using a little bit of Python and our Person Search Endpoint, we could search for, enrich, and extract any profile.
Here’s an example:
import requests
import json
api_key = 'Your_API_Key_Here'
headers = {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + api_key}
api_endpoint = 'https://nubela.co/proxycurl/api/v2/linkedin'
params = {
'linkedin_profile_url': 'https://linkedin.com/in/colton-randolph',
'extra': 'include',
'github_profile_id': 'include',
'facebook_profile_id': 'include',
'twitter_profile_id': 'include',
'personal_contact_number': 'include',
'personal_email': 'include',
'inferred_salary': 'include',
'skills': 'include',
'use_cache': 'if-recent',
'fallback_to_cache': 'on-error',
}
response = requests.get(api_endpoint,
params=params,
headers=headers)
formatted_data = json.dumps(response.json(), indent=4)
print(formatted_data)
It returns us the following result:
{
"public_identifier": "colton-randolph",
"profile_pic_url": "https://s3.us-west-000.backblazeb2.com/proxycurl/person/colton-randolph/profile?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=0004d7f56a0400b0000000001%2F20231027%2Fus-west-000%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20231027T201111Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=74f63d7668e64c8192e731d2c8d9fb227273a8708177eaa708b0a7d7fda17cd0",
"background_cover_image_url": null,
"first_name": "Colton",
"last_name": "Randolph",
"full_name": "Colton Randolph",
"follower_count": 1823,
"occupation": "Technical Writer at Proxycurl",
"headline": "Content strategist and conversion copywriter",
"summary": "Hi! Nice to meet you; I\u2019m Colton.\n\nA content strategist and conversion copywriter.\n\nIn short, I turn words into attention and sales.\n\nSEO & blog-based content writing, technical writing, traditional website copy, email copy, VSL, or Dan Kennedy style direct response copy \u2013 it doesn\u2019t matter\u2026\n\nNor does the target audience \u2013 I\u2019ve written for both B2C and B2B brands in various niches like eCom, Cannabis, info products, insurance, software, virtualization and networking, tech (in general), and beyond\u2026\n\nIf you're interested in content that ranks, as well as copy that builds a relationship and converts, reach out.",
"country": "US",
"country_full_name": "United States of America",
"city": "Wichita",
"state": null,
"experiences": [
{
"starts_at": {
"day": 1,
"month": 5,
"year": 2016
},
"ends_at": null,
"company": "Colton Randolph",
"company_linkedin_profile_url": null,
"title": "Freelance Copywriter",
"description": "I craft copy that actually works. Stop wasting your time on generic copy and content. Start getting leads and customers. Finally increase your conversions and revenue. Get going by reading my blog, then takeoff by shooting me an email, and let's talk growth.",
"location": null,
"logo_url": null
},
{
"starts_at": {
"day": 1,
"month": 8,
"year": 2023
},
"ends_at": null,
"company": "Proxycurl",
"company_linkedin_profile_url": "https://www.linkedin.com/company/proxycurl/",
"title": "Technical Writer",
"description": null,
"location": "Wichita, Kansas, United States",
"logo_url": "https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D560BAQG_yY7-UMuvZg/company-logo_400_400/0/1696561966581?e=1705536000&v=beta&t=yEYk4y9X_PwT_q-PDsU3AH0b7fBGlu6PUoEB1WQ8ToI"
}
And more, including contact information like email and phone number (depending on the profile).
Plus, since we used 'use_cache': 'if-recent here, it will only pull data that’s been scraped within 29-days, often even in real time.
Of course the biggest benefit with this option is that you can search and extract data from LinkedIn at scale. You could build our API into your existing systems and be able to utilize the rich B2B data LinkedIn provides with none of the normal headaches involved.
I should also note Proxycurl works with both people and companies on LinkedIn.
To search and export data from companies, you would use our Company Profile Endpoint.
Create your Proxycurl account today
It’s free to create a Proxycurl account, and you’ll receive 15 credits upon signing up to try out a few different actions.
You can click here to create your account today.
After you run out of your initial account credits, $10 can buy you 100 credits, and 100 credits can do quite a few different actions with our API.
For example, you could pull 50 different fresh LinkedIn profiles while using our if_recent caching parameter with our Person Profile Endpoint for 100 credits or $10 (it could be less or more depending on the parameters used, our full documentation is here).
Proxycurl is extremely cost effective while eliminating most of the headaches involved with pulling data from LinkedIn–even when you compare it to the official paid tools available from LinkedIn like their own limited API, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
It’s time you finally started operating with the fresh & rich B2B data you deserve.
P.S. Any questions about Proxycurl or how we scrape data from LinkedIn and beyond? Reach out to us at “[email protected]” and we would be happy to help.
