How do I search for someone's profile on LinkedIn?
Use the search bar, then the People filter. LinkedIn's people search help page, last updated seven months before we checked it on 4 November 2026, gives these steps:
Type a name or a query
Enter keywords or a natural language query into the Search bar at the top of the page. Pick the person from the dropdown, or press Enter or click See all results.
Filter to People
Click the People filter at the top of the results if it isn't selected. All filters adds Degree of connections, Locations, Current company, Connections of, Followers of, Past company, School, Industry, Profile language, Open to volunteering, Service categories and Keywords. Actively hiring is a Premium filter.
Search in the app
Tap the Search bar, enter your query, then pick a suggestion or tap Search. Tap the People tab, then the dropdown next to each category to sort and filter.
Natural language works too. LinkedIn's own examples include Finance leaders at nonprofits in Boston and People I know who work at LinkedIn. Two cautions from the same page: natural language search doesn't support quotes, so switch to Boolean when you need an exact title, and the results counter is always approximate.
Results carry a 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree icon. LinkedIn's degrees of connection page, last updated five years ago, calls anyone outside those degrees, your followers and your groups LinkedIn Member (Out of Network), and says some fields on their profiles have limited visibility. Opening a profile can also put you in that person's Who's viewed your profile list, depending on your privacy settings; our guide to viewing LinkedIn profiles anonymously covers the options.
Which LinkedIn searches count toward the commercial use limit?
Profile searches count; name searches from the top search box don't. LinkedIn's commercial use limit page, last updated two years before our check, says reaching the limit means your activity looks like commercial use, such as hiring or prospecting, and lists what counts:
| Activity | Counts toward the limit? |
|---|---|
| Searching for LinkedIn profiles on LinkedIn.com and mobile | Yes |
| Browsing profiles through People Also Viewed on the right of a profile | Yes |
| Viewing member profiles on the People tab of a company Page | Yes |
| Searching profiles by name in the search box at the top of every page on LinkedIn.com | No |
| Browsing your 1st-degree connections from the Connections page | No |
| Searching for jobs on the Jobs page | No |
| Opening profiles from outside LinkedIn.com, such as links in emails | No, but after a substantial number LinkedIn may ask you to continue on LinkedIn.com (external views page) |
The same page says free usage resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each calendar month, and that LinkedIn can't show the exact number of searches or views you have left and "cannot lift the limit upon request". You get a warning as you approach the limit, though it may not show if you use it up too quickly. The page gives no number (checked 4 November 2026).
A worked example: hit the limit on Friday 20 November 2026 and your free usage resets at midnight PST on Tuesday 1 December, 11 days later. LinkedIn lists name searches from the top box on LinkedIn.com as not counting, so use those days on people whose names you already have.
Premium Business, Recruiter Lite and Sales Navigator raise the limit; Premium DACH Essentials plans keep it, and cancelling Premium drops you to the basic limit without resetting it. Our guide to LinkedIn Premium for small business lists the plan prices LinkedIn showed on 20 October 2026.
Which LinkedIn profile search should you use?
Pick by what you already know about the person. Each row uses LinkedIn's help pages as of 4 November 2026:
| What you have | Search this way | Counts toward the limit? | Deciding fact |
|---|---|---|---|
| A name | Top search bar on LinkedIn.com | No | LinkedIn excludes name searches from the top box. |
| A list of names from an event, a podcast or a customer list | Look each one up by name on LinkedIn.com | No | LinkedIn's profile visibility page says type-ahead finds a name from a few letters, even with typos. |
| A role and a company, no name | People filter plus Current company, or a natural language query | Yes | This is a profile search. |
| An exact job title | Boolean string in the search bar | Yes | Natural language search doesn't support quotes. |
| People you already know | Connections page | No | Browsing 1st-degree connections is excluded. |
| No searches left this month | Google with site: | No | External views don't count, but LinkedIn may ask you to continue on LinkedIn.com. |
| Only an email address | Import your email contacts | Not a search | LinkedIn doesn't allow searching an email address directly. |
If searching by hand is eating your week, Siela's Lead Finder (our AI SDR) takes your website, suggests roles, industries, company sizes and locations to target, and looks for people with a reason to reach out now, such as hiring for the work you automate or changing role.
How does Boolean search work on LinkedIn?
Type the string straight into the main search bar, with AND, OR and NOT in capitals, quotation marks for exact phrases and parentheses for grouping, says LinkedIn's Boolean search page, last updated seven months ago. The same page says what doesn't work:
- Wildcards: asterisks are not supported, nor are braces, square brackets or angle brackets. Parentheses are the only grouping symbols LinkedIn recognises.
- Plus and minus: LinkedIn says + and - may appear to work but aren't officially supported. Use AND and NOT.
- Stop words: words such as by, in and with are not used.
Order matters. LinkedIn applies quotes first, then parentheses, then NOT, then AND, then OR. A worked example:
The fixed string uses three operators. LinkedIn's Boolean limits page, last updated two years ago, says free search caps the number of operators in one query (the page gives no number), Sales Navigator allows up to 15, and Recruiter and Recruiter Lite have no limit. For ready-made strings by role, use the ones in our guide to finding leads on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator. That guide also suggests People Also Viewed and company People tabs as free sources; both count toward the limit.
Can you search LinkedIn profiles without logging in, or by email?
Partly: Google can show the public version of a profile, if the member allows one. LinkedIn's profile visibility page says that, depending on members' settings, a version of a profile may be visible on search engines to people who aren't signed in, and that members can limit sections or turn the public profile off. LinkedIn's search page says guests on LinkedIn itself may be asked to sign in to continue searching.
Google's search operators page says to put site: directly in front of a site with no space, quotation marks around an exact phrase, and a minus sign in front of a word to leave it out. LinkedIn's profile URL page says profile addresses start with www.linkedin.com/in, and that members in some countries get a two-letter country prefix, such as ca.linkedin.com for Canada.
Copying results in bulk with a tool raises different questions, covered in our guide to whether LinkedIn scraping is legal.
Email is different. LinkedIn's visibility page says: "We don't allow members to search for an email address directly on LinkedIn to discover a member's profile." One of the ways LinkedIn's help lists for finding people you know is to import your email contacts and invite them. Members control whether others can look them up from an email address or phone number with the Discoverability by email and Discoverability by phone number settings, under Settings & Privacy, then Visibility.
Frequently asked questions
Why does LinkedIn show LinkedIn Member instead of a name?
LinkedIn's help pages describe two cases. In Who's viewed your profile, a viewer who chose private mode shows as LinkedIn Member, and LinkedIn says even Premium members can't see those names. Separately, LinkedIn Member (Out of Network) is its label for members outside your 1st, 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, followers and groups; some fields on their profiles have limited visibility, and LinkedIn suggests growing your network or sending an InMail where that option exists.
Does LinkedIn tell someone you searched for them?
Search Appearances, as LinkedIn's help page describes it, shows members how many people found them through search, with filters for the top companies and job titles of those searchers; the page mentions no list of names. Opening their profile is different: Who's viewed your profile can list recent visitors, depending on the viewer's privacy settings, and Premium members see full lists.
Is LinkedIn profile search free?
Yes, on any account, within the commercial use limit. LinkedIn's help page gives no number for that limit (checked 4 November 2026), but says it resets at midnight PST on the 1st of each month, and name searches from the top bar on LinkedIn.com don't use it. Premium Business, Recruiter Lite and Sales Navigator raise it; Premium DACH Essentials plans keep it.
How do I clear my LinkedIn search history?
LinkedIn's search help page says to click Clear to the right of Recent searches, then confirm. Its older search history page splits it by device: on desktop, click the search bar, See all, then Clear and Clear history; in the mobile app, tap the search bar, tap Clear and confirm. Before clearing, note that clicking a term in Recent searches runs it again, which saves retyping long Boolean strings.
How accurate is the LinkedIn search results count?
LinkedIn says search results are always approximate, so the counter at the top can differ from the number of profiles you can actually page through. Treat it as a rough size of the market. If you need an exact count for a list, save the profiles you find and count those.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help: Search for people on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Search on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Commercial use limit (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Search and view profiles from sources outside of LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Use Boolean search on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Boolean Query Limitations (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: What People Can See on Your Profile (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Your Network and Degrees of Connection (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Manage your profile's visibility on and off LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Find people you know on LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Find your LinkedIn public profile URL (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: View your profile Search Appearances (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Differences between profile appearances and profile views (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- Google Search Help: Refine Google searches (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: Who's viewed your profile visibility settings (checked 4 Nov 2026)
- LinkedIn Help: View and delete your search history from LinkedIn (checked 4 Nov 2026)