How to View Your LinkedIn Profile As Others See It (+ 5 Visibility Tips)

You're here because you want to know how to see your LinkedIn profile the way other people see it when they land on your page. Let's get right into it.

How to View Your LinkedIn Profile As Others See It

To view your LinkedIn profile as others see it:

1. Log in to LinkedIn
2. Click "Me" in the top-right navigation
3. In the dropdown, click "Settings & Privacy" — a new page will open
4. In the left sidebar, click the "Visibility" tab
5. Click "Edit your public profile"
6. A new page opens showing a preview of your profile exactly as the public sees it

Shortcut: go directly to linkedin.com/public-profile/settings.

Another option: copy your profile URL (e.g. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname) and open it in an incognito tab in Chrome. This shows your profile from the perspective of someone who is not logged into LinkedIn at all — which is slightly different from how a logged-in connection would see it.

One thing worth noting: LinkedIn removed the ability to preview your profile from the perspective of a specific person (say, a 2nd-degree connection). That feature no longer exists. What you can control, however, is quite a lot — which brings us to the visibility settings worth knowing about.

LinkedIn's Privacy and Visibility Settings

Tip 1: Edit Your Profile's Public Visibility

On the public profile settings page, you can control who can find and view your LinkedIn profile. This includes whether your profile shows up in Google Search results, and how much information is visible to people outside your network.

My recommendation: make everything public unless you have a specific reason not to. If you're posting content regularly, visibility is the entire point — the easier it is for people to find and read your profile, the better. Limiting visibility only makes sense if you're in a sensitive industry or actively want to avoid unsolicited outreach.

Tip 2: Create a Public Profile Badge

From the same public profile settings page, you can generate a LinkedIn profile badge to embed on your website, blog, or online resume. Click "Create a badge" and follow the steps in the popup — it generates a small widget with your photo, name, and headline that links back to your LinkedIn profile.

Tip 3: Turn Off the "People Also Viewed" Widget

LinkedIn shows a "People Also Viewed" sidebar on your profile — a list of other profiles people looked at after visiting yours. This can cause visitors to leave your profile earlier than they otherwise would, essentially sending them to your competitors or peers.

To turn it off: go to Settings & Privacy → Visibility → Visibility of your LinkedIn activity and look for "Viewers of this profile also viewed" — toggle it off. It's a small tweak but worth doing if you're optimizing your profile for conversions.

Tip 4: Set a Custom Profile URL

A custom LinkedIn URL (e.g. linkedin.com/in/yourname) is more professional and easier to remember than the default string of numbers LinkedIn assigns. It also makes your profile easier to find via search.

To set it: go to your profile → click "Edit public profile & URL" (top right) → click the pencil icon next to your URL → type your preferred handle. Keep it clean: your name, or name + role.

Tip 5: Manage Visibility of Your LinkedIn Activity

Control What Gets Shared With Your Network

Under Settings & Privacy → Visibility → Visibility of your LinkedIn activity, you can define exactly what LinkedIn broadcasts to your connections — things like new connections, job changes, work anniversaries, and profile edits. If you're making a lot of changes to your profile, you might want to mute these temporarily to avoid flooding your network with updates.

Choose How Others See You When You View Their Profile

LinkedIn lets you choose whether people know when you've visited their profile. Your options are: your full name and headline, a private/anonymous mode, or something in between. Private mode is useful when you're researching competitors or prospects and don't want to tip them off.

Note that if you enable private mode, you'll also lose the ability to see who viewed your profile (unless you have Premium). It's a trade-off worth understanding before you switch.

If you're serious about growing on LinkedIn, understanding these visibility levers is just the start. Check out our guide on the LinkedIn algorithm to understand how your content gets distributed once people do land on your profile.