How to Turn Off "Viewers of This Profile Also Viewed" on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a feature called "Viewers of this profile also viewed" — essentially the same idea as Amazon's "Customers who bought this also bought." When someone visits your profile, LinkedIn shows them a sidebar of other profiles they might want to check out.

For most professionals, this is a net negative. Every visitor who clicks away to another profile is a visitor who stops paying attention to yours. Here's how to disable it — and what to consider before you do.

How to Turn Off "Viewers of This Profile Also Viewed"

If the animation above doesn't load, here's the step-by-step:

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account
2. Click the Me icon in the top-right navigation bar
3. Select Settings & Privacy from the dropdown (a new page opens)
4. In the left sidebar, click Account Preferences
5. Find the Viewers of this profile also viewed option and click it
6. Switch the toggle to Off (grey state)

That's it. The change takes effect immediately — LinkedIn will stop showing other profiles in the sidebar when people visit your page.

What the "People Also Viewed" Feature Actually Does

When someone visits your LinkedIn profile, the "People Also Viewed" sidebar appears on the right side of the page. It shows up to five other profiles that have been viewed by people who also viewed yours — basically a collaborative filtering algorithm, same as what powers product recommendations on e-commerce sites.

LinkedIn builds these suggestions using shared signals: job title, industry, company, location, and viewing patterns among members with similar professional backgrounds. This means if you're a sales director at a SaaS company, your profile might recommend other sales directors at competing companies — which is useful for the person doing research, but not necessarily useful for you.

Enabling the feature means your profile gets shown on others' pages too, which can be a source of passive discovery and connection requests. It's a trade-off: visibility in exchange for sending your visitors elsewhere.

Why Most Professionals Should Turn It Off

If you're actively prospecting or building a personal brand on LinkedIn, turning this feature off is almost always the right call. Here's the logic:

• Longer profile dwell time converts better. Visitors who stay on your profile longer are more likely to connect, follow, or reach out. A sidebar of competing profiles cuts that short.
• You prevent competitors from riding your profile visits. If someone found you through a search or a shared post, the last thing you want is LinkedIn promoting your direct competitors right beneath your headline.
• Cleaner profiles feel more authoritative. Without the distraction of suggested profiles, visitors focus on your experience, skills, and content — which is what actually drives inbound leads and requests.

The one scenario where leaving it on makes sense: if you're in a passive discovery phase and want more connection requests from people in adjacent roles or companies, the reciprocal visibility can help. But for anyone actively using LinkedIn as a sales or marketing channel, off is the better default.