Using LinkedIn can offer an extremely positive return on investment if you master the subtleties of the tool and apply certain basic rules to avoid restrictions on LinkedIn .
But beware: intensive use without a framework will result in restrictions from LinkedIn. Or worse, a permanent ban from your account.
If you’re looking for a solution, check out our Waalaxy tool, which isn’t affected by LinkedIn’s restrictions. Otherwise, in this article, we explain all the different LinkedIn restrictions and our tips for getting around them. 👊
In this article, we take a look at the basic rules you need to know to avoid this kind of situation.
LinkedIn restrictions: quotas
LinkedIn wants you to use their tool, but they don’t want you spamming people on the network all day long. On LinkedIn, there are 4 types of direct interaction (excluding likes and comments) with users:
- Profile visit.
- Profile following.
- Connection request.
- Messages.
Each type of action has a « quota » maximum daily quota that must not be exceeded, at the risk of suffering restrictions from LinkedIn.
This quota is different for each type of action, and also varies according to specific criteria associated with your account.
For example, your quotas will be slightly higher if you have a premium account, and if you have a long-standing account with a large network.
Unfortunately, these quotas are a « black box » (LinkedIn does not reveal how they are determined).
At Waalaxy, thanks to numerous in-house tests, we have determined the maximum quotas that can be reached without putting your account at risk in the long term:
The invitation limit is 200 per week (without notes) for most accounts, and 30 to 100 per week for certain restricted accounts (new account type).
- Connection requests: between 80 and 100 per day (up to a maximum of 200 per week).
- Sending messages: between 100 and 150 per day.
- Profile follow-up: between 80 and 100 per day.
- Profile visit: between 100 and 150 per day.
- This number is 3 for the Freemium plan.
It is possible to momentarily (and to some extent) exceed these quotas on a day or two. Your account will not necessarily be restricted if you send 101 connection requests on a given day.
But if you exceed this quota too frequently, LinkedIn will eventually apply restrictions to your account.
You will not be able to send any further connection requests for a number of days, and you will receive a warning.
If you fail to comply with the warning, LinkedIn may suspend your account permanently.
Restrictions on LinkedIn: search quotas
On LinkedIn, you can perform searches to access certain people, whether to generate lead lists or search for candidates, you’ll need to use the search function.
As you’d expect, you can’t do an infinite number of searches with LinkedIn’s standard (free) subscription. Yes, it’s also in their interest to make you pay!
Here too, LinkedIn sets a maximum search quota for free users. It’s obviously a black box too, but we at Waalaxy can tell that beyond 200-300 search pages viewed per day.
You’ll no longer have access to search results, and you’ll need to take out a paid subscription to continue. However, we have found a way to use Sales Navigator for free.
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Suspicious behavior
LinkedIn doesn’t like « » suspect behavior, i.e. behavior that appears to be carried out by robots, not humans.
At Waalaxy, we have a number of security measures in place to simulate human behavior:
- A value corresponding to 80% of the maximum quota is set randomly each day, so that the same number of shares is not sent.
- When the weekly quota for sending invitations (200) is reached, a security system is set up, and all invitations are paused until the quota is renewed.
- The sending time between two actions is not always the same.
- The HTML code of LinkedIn source pages remains unchanged.
On the other hand, LinkedIn doesn’t like fake accounts, and usually spots them easily, while getting better every day. When your account is suspicious, LinkedIn will ask you to verify your identity. So it’s getting harder and harder to fool the LinkedIn algorithm.
But with the right process and precautions, it’s still possible to create fake accounts undetected.
Finally, LinkedIn doesn’t like multi-accounts. We strongly advise you not to log out of one LinkedIn account and then log back in to another. If you use several LinkedIn accounts, you’ll need to use dedicated Chrome sessions.
Account awareness
Once again, the LinkedIn algorithm that detects these behaviors is a black box, so there are no exact rules, but rather, a set of « best practices » that guarantee with a high index of confidence that your account will not be restricted.
To sum up, you can imagine the algorithm as a robot giving you a « score » based on certain criteria and actions you take on LinkedIn. The higher the score, the less likely you are to be restricted, and vice versa.
Among the factors at play, we can cite :
- Acceptance rate of connection requests: be careful, if this rate is too low (<20%), LinkedIn might think you’re sending requests to people you don’t know and who have no interest in accepting your request, and this will look like spam.
- The size of your network and the number of people who send you connection requests (the greater the number of people who send you connection requests).
The higher the quality of your « » account in LinkedIn’s eyes, the less likely you are to be restricted. An account with over 10,000 connections that receives several dozen connection requests a day won’t have much to worry about. - The ability to verify the account with ID. A verified account with ID is much less likely to be restricted than an account that has not been verified, since the verified account rules out the possibility of the account being a fake.
- The number of people who follow you. If many people follow you but don’t have you in their network. You’ll be identified as an influencer by LinkedIn, which will considerably reduce your chances of being restricted.
- The age of your account: an older account is less at risk than a newer one.
To avoid restrictions on LinkedIn, it’s important to know all these tips, especially if you do a lot of prospecting.
Bonus
If you want to further reduce the chances of your account being restricted, avoid sending actions on weekends, and outside office hours. 😉
