LinkedIn feed ranking

When a member opens LinkedIn there are tens of thousands of candidate posts; a first-pass candidate generation layer uses an efficient, lightweight ranker to pick the top ones ¹. LinkedIn describes the system as two passes, the first gathering content from your network and the second ranking it ². The second pass predicts actions such as clicks, reactions, comments and shares, combines them into one weighted score, and sorts posts by it ³. Compare Instagram ranking and TikTok For You feed.

LinkedIn's product team sums up the feed with the saying "People You Know, Talking About Things You Care About", and says the more valuable the conversation, the higher a post goes ¹². Ranking starts from your connections, then weighs who you have interacted with directly ³. A post can also reach you because a connection liked, commented on or shared it, and a connection's post using a hashtag you follow gets an extra boost ⁴⁵. Its advice to posters: post things that encourage a response ⁶.

Clicks and reactions are rare for people who mostly read, so LinkedIn also measures dwell time, which on the feed starts when at least half of a post is visible ¹². Posts viewed only briefly with no action count as skipped, and a P(skip) model now lowers every post's score in proportion to its predicted chance of being skipped ³. LinkedIn's Help Center adds that the feed mixes your network's posts with recommended content labeled Trending, Recommended for you or Popular ⁴. See also Watch time.