Using LinkedIn can offer an extremely positive return on investment if you master the intricacies of the tool and if you apply certain basic rules. But beware, heavy use without best practices will result in restrictions on LinkedIn, or worse, a permanent ban on your account.

If you are looking for a solution, check out our tool : Waalaxy, which is not affected by LinkedIn’s restrictions. Otherwise, in this article we explain all the different LinkedIn restrictions and our tips on how to get out of them. 👊

In this article, we summarize these basic rules to know how to avoid this kind of situation.

Action quotas

LinkedIn wants you to use their tool, but they don’t want you to spam people on the network all day long. On LinkedIn, there are 4 types of direct interactions (excluding likes and comments) with users:

• Profile visit.
• Profile following.
• The connection request.
• The messages.

Each type of action has a maximum daily “quota” that should not be exceeded, at the risk of having restrictions on 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 an old 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 internal tests, we have determined the maximum quotas that it is possible to reach without running any risk for your account in the long term:

• Profile visits: between 80 and 100 / day.
• Profile follows: between 80 and 100 / day.
• Connection requests: between 80 and 100 / day.
• Sending messages: between 120 and 150 / day.

It is possible to temporarily exceed (and to a certain extent) these quotas one 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 by a too big margin or too frequently, LinkedIn will eventually restrict you. You will no longer be able to send connection requests for a certain number of days and you will receive a warning.
If you do it again after a warning, LinkedIn may suspend your account permanently.

Research quotas

On LinkedIn, you can perform searches to access certain people, whether to generate lists of prospects or search for candidates, you will need to use the search function.
As you might expect, you can’t do endless searches with the standard (free) LinkedIn subscription. Yes, their interest is also to make you pay!

Here too, LinkedIn sets a maximum search quota for free users. It is obviously a black box also, but we know that beyond 200-300 search pages viewed per day, you will no longer have access to search results and you will need to take a paid subscription to be able to continue. But we find a way to use the Sales Navigator for free.

Why LinkedIn is blocked?

LinkedIn does not like “suspicious” behavior, that is, behavior that appears to be carried out by robots, not by humans and the tool can block your account. We call it “restricted”. 

Some tools are riskier than others. In particular, LinkedIn does not like when an account is used in a certain country (for example France), to be used on the other side of the planet (for example in the USA) a few hours later. We therefore strongly recommend that you do not use cloud solutions (such as Meet-Alfred, we-connect, Phantombuster or Neodeal)
These solutions have the advantage of being able to send actions from your LinkedIn account without having your computer turned on with a LinkedIn tab open, but it will take LinkedIn very long to detect the use of such a tool and to suspend your account.

It goes without saying that LinkedIn does not like false accounts, and generally finds them relatively easily while improving day by day. It is therefore increasingly difficult to fool the LinkedIn algorithm; but with the right process and the right precautions, it is still possible to create false accounts without being spotted.

Finally, LinkedIn does not like the use of multiple accounts. It is strongly recommended that you do not log out of a LinkedIn account to reconnect to another account in the process.
If you use multiple LinkedIn accounts, you will need to use dedicated Chrome sessions.

Account reputation

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” which guarantee with a high degree of confidence that your account will not be restricted.

To summarize, it is possible to imagine the algorithm as a robot assigning you a “score” based on certain criteria and certain actions that you perform on the platform. The higher the score, the less likely you are to be restricted and vice versa.

Among the factors that play a role, we can cite:

• The connection requests acceptance rate: be careful, if this rate is too low (<20%), LinkedIn might think that you are sending requests to people you do not know and who have no interest in accepting your request, and it will pass for spam
• The size of your network and the number of people who send you connection requests (the more people send you connection requests, the better your account will be in LinkedIn’s eyes, and the less you will be “at-risk” of being restricted.). An account that has more than 10,000 connections and that receives several dozen connection requests per day will not have much to fear, for example
• The ability to verify the account with ID. An account that has been verified with ID will be much less likely to be restricted than an account that has not been verified since the verified account excludes the possibility that the account is a fake account.
• The number of people following you. If a large number of people follow you without having you in their network, you will be identified as an influencer on  LinkedIn, which will considerably reduce your chances of being restricted.
• Age of your account: an old account will be less at risk than a more recent one.

To avoid restrictions on LinkedIn it is important to know all these tips, especially if you prospect a lot.

Bonus

If you want to further reduce the chances of your account being restricted, avoid sending actions on weekends, and outside office hours. 😉