Contents
Topic interests are the subjects LinkedIn infers a member cares about, from profile details and what the member follows, reacts to and spends time on, so it can show them relevant posts.12 Members can also state their interests by following people, companies and hashtags.3 For creators, LinkedIn Engineering wrote in March 2026 that its new Feed ranking system, which chooses and orders posts in the Feed, matches posts on meaning, not just keywords, so a post can reach people who do not follow the creator or are not connected to them when their interests and engagement history fit the topic.4 LinkedIn's Pressroom said in March 2026 that it is testing an Interest Picker during sign-up, so new members can choose topics and get a personalized Feed from day one.5
Signals LinkedIn uses to infer interests
LinkedIn works out topic interests using signals, pieces of information its machine-learning systems assess to understand a member's preferences.2 LinkedIn describes three types: identity (profile details such as location, workplace, industry, skills, experience, headline, job title, work history and education), content (what a post is about, plus tagged people, companies or topics) and activity (what you reacted to, commented on or shared, who you follow, the content you spend the most time viewing, and topics you've shown interest in).245 It also considers what a member has scrolled past and how their engagement patterns change over time.45 LinkedIn Ireland's 2025 DSA report says a post can appear because it bears relevance to a member's job, industry or interests.1 A 2019 Microsoft patent describes a similar approach, inferring a member's degree of interest in topics from sources followed, likes and shares, tags on content, searches, skills and the activity of similar members, with different levels of interest in different topics.6
Ways members state their interests
Inference is only half the picture, because members can also tell LinkedIn directly what they want to see in the Feed.3 LinkedIn Help says members can follow, unfollow or mute people, companies and hashtags to customize the Feed; LinkedIn's 2021 guide says to click a hashtag in the Feed and then click follow under its title.37 LinkedIn's 2021 guide added that members would see more of the posts they care about, whether from a person or company or in a particular format, and that people who like or reply to their insights would see more of them.7 Microsoft patents describe the same idea beyond people: a 2020 patent lets members pick topics they care about and remove trending topics by unchecking a box, and a 2021 patent lets a member follow a category such as an industry to see the articles popular among people in it.89 New members can lack the profile and engagement information used to personalize the Feed, as the Pressroom explained in March 2026, and LinkedIn Engineering described a similar lack of history for new posts.510 The Interest Picker test addresses that by letting them select topics such as "Leadership," "Job Search Skills" or "Career Growth."5
Matching interests by meaning and what it means for creators
From LinkedIn's research and patents, which may not describe how LinkedIn works today
This section is based on LinkedIn's engineering team, which describes how topic interests are turned into matches between members and posts.410 In 2023 LinkedIn Engineering said it added embeddings, which are compact numerical profiles of members, hashtags and posts learned from past interactions, to help choose relevant posts for the Homepage Feed.10 It said members who share preferences or interact with similar content tend to have similar embeddings, meaning their profiles sit a small distance apart.10 For the missing-history problem described above, it said embeddings allow recommendations based on similarities with existing members or posts.10 In March 2026 LinkedIn Engineering said its new system uses large language models to understand what a post is really about, and that it replaces several separate systems for finding posts with one.4 For creators, it said a post on a related topic can reach people interested in the wider field even if they use different terms, and posts that were shown but got no engagement were used in training as examples of weaker matches.4 Our read because both systems learn from engagement, creators should think about a post's meaning and the audience it engages, not tags alone.410
What you can do
- Hide content in your Feed that you don't want to see, which LinkedIn Help lists as a way to manage what appears there.3