How to Extract LinkedIn Profiles Without Coding: A Step-by-Step Guide

Gathering professional data from LinkedIn can be valuable for research, recruitment, and market analysis. This guide demonstrates a straightforward method to extract LinkedIn profile information without requiring programming skills or paid tools.

Setting Up Your LinkedIn Profile Search

The process begins with a targeted Google search. By using Google’s advanced search features, you can narrow down LinkedIn profiles based on specific criteria:

1. Search for LinkedIn on Google
2. Click on ‘Tools’ and then ‘Advanced Search’
3. In the ‘All these words’ field, enter job titles and locations (e.g., ‘CEO’ and ‘Newark’)
4. In the ‘Any of these words’ field, add industry keywords (e.g., ‘SaaS’ and ‘FinTech’)
5. Set the language to English
6. Select your preferred region or country
7. In the domain field, enter ‘linkedin.com/in’ (not just ‘linkedin.com’)

The domain specification is crucial. Using ‘linkedin.com/in’ targets individual profiles rather than LinkedIn’s main site, ensuring more relevant results.

Optimizing Search Results

By default, Google displays 10 results per page. To maximize efficiency, you can modify the URL to show up to 100 results at once by adding ‘&num=100’ to the end of the search URL and pressing Enter.

Using Instant Data Scraper

The next step involves using a browser extension called Instant Data Scraper:

1. Install the Instant Data Scraper extension and pin it for easy access
2. Navigate to your search results page
3. Click on the Instant Data Scraper icon
4. The tool will automatically identify and extract data from the page

The extracted data typically includes LinkedIn profile URLs, job titles, full names, and follower counts. If the scraper doesn’t select the right data, you can click ‘Try another table’ until you get the desired results.

Scraping Multiple Pages

To extract data from multiple pages of search results:

1. Scroll down to locate the ‘next’ button
2. Click on ‘Locate next button’ in the scraper interface
3. Click the actual ‘next’ button on the page
4. Select ‘Start scrolling’ to automatically navigate through pages while collecting data

Processing the Extracted Data

After collection, the data can be downloaded in Excel format for further processing:

1. Rename columns to reflect their contents (e.g., ‘LinkedIn Profile URL’, ‘Company Name’, ‘Full Name’, ‘Followers’)
2. Clean the data by removing unwanted text (e.g., removing the word ‘LinkedIn’ from names)
3. Delete unnecessary columns
4. Apply formatting to make the data more visually appealing

This method provides a cost-effective way to gather LinkedIn profile information for various business purposes without requiring special technical skills or expensive tools.