Would you like to know more about LinkedIn’s user demographics, as well as LinkedIn’s visitor statistics broken down by country, city, and state?

If so, you’ve come to the right place!

After patiently waiting for a whole year since my last post on LinkedIn statistics, I’m excited to bring you LinkedIn’s latest user demographics and visitor statistics for 2011.

In this post, I will compare the data I presented in September 2010 to the data I just pulled from Quantcast.

Quantcast is used by 9 of the top 10 media agencies because they quite accurately quantify Internet audiences.

While some sites are not directly measured and only have estimated data at this time (such as Facebook and Twitter), LinkedIn is fully “quantified.”

In other words, Quantcast directly measures LinkedIn’s visitors – which gives us great information and some very interesting insights!

Read on to see the following LinkedIn data:

• Global monthly visitors
• Global monthly visits
• Visits per person
• Pageviews per person
• Visit frequency
• Business activity
• User demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, income, education level)
• Monthly visitors by country
• Monthly visitors by city (global)
• Monthly visitors by state (U.S.)

LinkedIn Global Monthly Visitors

This chart shows the monthly global unique visitors to LinkedIn for the past 6 months.

Note that Quantcast claims they are the only measurement service that tells you the difference between cookies and people, which is important because a single person can be represented by many cookies (home, work, phone, different browsers).

What should stand out to you is that in one year, LinkedIn has more than doubled in the number of people using their site globally on a monthly basis, from 45.8M in September 2010 to 94.3M in September 2011.

2011 Data

2010 Data

LinkedIn Global Monthly Visits

This chart shows the total number of visits to LinkedIn for the past 6 months.

Just as with the number of people using the site, LinkedIn more than doubled the number of monthly visits from global users in 2011 over 2010.

2011 Data

2010 Data

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LinkedIn Monthly Visits Per Person

The most recent data from Quantcast shows that the average number of visits per person to LinkedIn is 2.8 per month, both for U.S. and global visitors.

This is essentially unchanged from September 2010.

2011 Data

2010 Data

LinkedIn Monthly Pageviews Per Person

Quantcast’s latest data from LinkedIn shows that monthly page-views per person has been trending down slightly, from 28 for the U.S. and 29 globally in September 2010 to 25 for the U.S. and 24 globally in September 2011.

2011 Data

2010 Data

LinkedIn Global Traffic Frequency and Business Activity

Quantcast breaks down visitor traffic into three categories:

1. Passers By, users who visit a site or interact with media once per month;
2. Regulars, those who visit a site or interact with media more than once but less than 30 times per month;
3. Addicts, those that interact with a site 30 or more times per month.

2011 Data

2010 Data

This data shows that 1% of all visitors to LinkedIn are responsible for 25% of all LinkedIn visits, that the 33% classified as “Regulars” account for 51% of all the visits, and that 66% of visitors to LinkedIn visit about once a month.

I have a hunch that the 1% “Addicts” responsible for 25% of all LinkedIn visits are recruiters and HR professionals. What do you think? That’s not bad news for LinkedIn at all, considering how they generate revenue.

With regard to where people tend to access LinkedIn from, over 60% of visitors globally and in the U.S. visit LinkedIn from home rather than from work, and the exact percentages are unchanged in 2011 vs. 2010.

2011 Data

2010 Data

LinkedIn User Demographics

As a professional social networking site, the age, income, and college graduate/post graduate figures are pretty much where most people would expect them to be.

26% of LinkedIn users are aged 18-34, and 70% are aged 35-49 and 50+.

75% of LinkedIn users are college educated, with 27% at the graduate school level. Unsurprisingly, 39% of LinkedIn users make over $100K annually.

For those who have argued that using social networking sites for recruiting purposes may be discriminatory, we can see that the male/female split is very close to 50/50 – and even closer than it was back in September 2010.

However, African Americans and Hispanics seem to be underrepresented on LinkedIn, at least with regard to Internet averages, while Asians are overrepresented based on Internet averages.

2011 Data

2010 Data

LinkedIn Monthly Visitors by Country

This chart shows the latest data (from August) for the top 48 countries by number of LinkedIn visitors monthly by country – not the number of LinkedIn profiles per country.

While the U.K. and India were battling over #2 and #3 globally back in September 2010, the United Kingdom has decidedly taken the lead over India and is solidly #2 in terms of the total number of visitors globally by country.

Brazil more than quadrupled their number of LinkedIn users visiting the site monthly, jumping impressively from #7 globally in 2010 to #4, knocking the Netherlands down to #5.

There is a tight race in the 4.7M to 4.9M monthly visitor range between #4, #5, and #6 – Brazil, Netherlands, and Canada, respectively. The next tier down is the 2.2M to 2.9M group, represented by Spain, Australia, Italy, and France.

2011 Data

2010 Data

Being the curious guy that I am, I decided to see where the lowest number of monthly visitors to LinkedIn come from – see the list below.

I have to admit that I had to look up some of these places to see where they were.

Notice that there are visits to LinkedIn coming from Vatican City (Holy See).

LinkedIn Visitors by City

This chart shows the latest data (from August) for the top 48 cities from which visitors come to LinkedIn.

I am not sure what “Unknown” represents, other than the obvious – do you have an idea?

Some folks in the United States may be surprised to see that the #1 city is (still!) London. That’s right, there are more visitors to LinkedIn from London on a monthly basis than from Mountain View, CA (LinkedIn’s headquarters and downtown Silicon Valley).

Furthermore, out of the top 25 “known” cities, only 9 are from the United States, demonstrating how truly global LinkedIn is.

I am not sure what’s going on with Council Bluffs, IA ranking #7. It’s right outside of Omaha, NE, but still – I would not have guessed they would rank #7, ahead of Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Delhi. No offense Council Bluffs!

2011 Data

2010 Data

Just for fun, I decided to see what cities had the least number of visitors to LinkedIn.

After a ridiculous amount of clicking (I had to get to page 1,379 and 1,380 of the results), here they are:

LinkedIn U.S. Monthly Visitors By State

Once again, California has the most monthly visitors to LinkedIn by a wide margin – more than double New York, jumping significantly from 3.6M monthly visitors in 2010 to 9.6M in 2011.

If you were curious, Wyoming has the least number of monthly visitors to LinkedIn out of all 50 states.

2011 Data

2010 Data

I hope you found the LinkedIn visitor demographics and data interesting!

If you haven’t already, I recommend you investigate other sites using Quantcast, even if the sites aren’t directly measured. For example – check out Quantcast’s estimated user demographics and visitor statistics for Facebook and Twitter.

Although only estimated data, the information is still quite interesting!

If you have ever been curious about LinkedIn’s demographics, as well as LinkedIn’s visitor statistics broken down by country, city, and state, you’ve come to the right place! A while ago I stumbled across a very interesting and powerful website called Quantcast, which is used by 9 of the top 10 media agencies because they quite accurately quantify Internet audiences.

While some sites are not directly measured and only have estimated data at this time (such as Facebook and Twitter), LinkedIn is fully “quantified.” In other words, Quantcast directly measures LinkedIn’s visitors – which gives us some very interesting insights.

LinkedIn Global Monthly Visitors

This chart shows the monthly global unique visitors to LinkedIn for the past 6 months. Note that Quantcast claims they are the only measurement service that tells you the difference between cookies and people, which is important because a single person can be represented by many cookies (home, work, phone, different browsers).

LinkedIn Global Monthly Visits

This chart shows the total number of visits to LinkedIn for the past 6 months

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LinkedIn Visits Per Person

The most recent data from Quantcast shows that the average number of visits per person to LinkedIn is 2.8 per month.

LinkedIn Pageviews Per Person

Here we see that the most recent data from Quantcast shows that the page-views per person has been trending down slightly, and is 28 for the U.S. and 29 globally.

LinkedIn Global Traffic Frequency and Business Activity

Quantcast breaks down visitor traffic into three categories:

1. Passers By, users who visit a site or interact with media once per month;
2. Regulars, those who visit a site or interact with media more than once but less than 30 times per month;
3. Addicts, those that interact with a site 30 or more times per month.

This data shows that 1% of all visitors to LinkedIn are responsible for 25% of all LinkedIn visits, and that 66% of visitors to LinkedIn visit only once a month.

I have a hunch that the 1% “Addicts” responsible for 25% of all LinkedIn visits are recruiters and HR professionals. What do you think?

Also, over 60% of visitors globally and in the U.S. visit LinkedIn from home rather than from work/a business.

LinkedIn Visitor Demographics

There aren’t too many surprises with LinkedIn’s visitor demographics. As a professional social networking site, the age, income, and college graduates/post graduates are pretty much where most people would expect them to be. For those who have argued that using social networking sites for recruiting purposes may be discriminatory, we can see that the male/female split is very close to 50/50. However, African Americans and Hispanics seem to be underrepresented on LinkedIn with regard to Internet averages, while Asians are overrepresented based on Internet averages.

LinkedIn Visitors by Country

This chart shows the latest data (from May) for the top 48 countries by number of visitors by country – not the number of LinkedIn profiles per country. The U.K. and India are duking it out for #2 and #3 globally, and it’s an incredibly close match! Although not shown below, the fewest visits came from Antarctica. While that may not be surprising, the fact that there were any visits to LinkedIn from Antarctica is cool!

LinkedIn Visitors by City

This chart shows the latest data (from May) for the top 48 cities from which visitors come to LinkedIn. I am not sure what “Unknown” represents, other than the obvious – do you have an idea? Some folks in the United States may be surprised to see that the #1 city is London. Furthermore, out of the top 5 “known” cities, only 1 is from the United States, demonstrating how truly global LinkedIn is.

LinkedIn Visitors By State

I don’t think  many people would be surprised to see that the most visits to LinkedIn come from California. I hope you found the LinkedIn visitor demographics and data interesting! If you haven’t already, I recommend you investigate other sites using Quantcast, even if the sites aren’t directly measured. The estimated values are still quite interesting!

If you ever have a need to perform diversity sourcing, I’m going to show you a trick on LinkedIn that goes beyond the obvious and “everyone’s doing it” methods of searching for fraternities, sororities, specific universities, and of course groups, societies and associations.

Let’s say you were in need of identifying people with specific skills and experience that are also women (software engineers, CFO’s, etc.), and you’ve already tried the standard methods of identifying them. One tactic some people and organizations utlize is searching for common first names for women. However, with most search engines, you’re limited in the size of the search string you can run (sometimes as few as 100 characters!), so you can’t search for many names with a single search. Plus, limiting yourself to only the most common first names is, well…limiting.

While I’ve written about the fact that LinkedIn’s search fields appear bottomless (I have yet to find a limit to the number of characters/terms that can be entered and searched for), I don’t know of many people who try and take advantage of LinkedIn’s limitless search fields.

See where I might be going here?

Imagine if you could search for a large number of names at once – not just common names, but practicaly all names.

You could go to a baby names website (or any names website – take your pick, there are MANY), look up girl names, and build huge OR strings.

For example, here is a search for 385 girl names starting with C:

(Cade OR Cadee OR Cadence OR Cadrian OR Caelyn OR Cai OR Cailey OR Cailin OR Caimile OR Cairine OR Cairistiona OR Cait OR Caitlin OR Caitlyn OR Caitrin OR Caja OR Cala OR Calandra OR Calantha OR Caledonia OR Calendre OR Caley OR Calida OR Calista OR Calix OR Calixte OR Calla OR Callan OR Callia OR Callidora OR Calliope OR Callista OR Callisto OR Caltha OR Calypso OR Cambria OR Camelai OR Camellia OR Cameo OR Camilla OR Camille OR Camira OR Canace OR Candace OR Candice OR Candida OR Candide OR Candie OR Candra OR Candy OR Cantara OR Caoimhe OR Capri OR Caprice OR Cara OR Caragh OR Carajean OR Caralee OR Caralyn OR Cardinia OR Caren OR Carensa OR Carenza OR Caresse OR Carew OR Carey OR Carha OR Cari OR Carin OR Carina OR Carine OR Carissa OR Carla OR Carleigh OR Carlen OR Carley OR Carlie OR Carlin OR Carlina OR Carling OR Carlota OR Carlotta OR Carly OR Carmel OR Carmela OR Carmelita OR Carmen OR Carmine OR Carmita OR Carna OR Carnation OR Carnelian OR Carol OR Carolena OR Caroline OR Carolyn OR Caron OR Carreen OR Carrie OR Carrieann OR Carrigan OR Carrington OR Carryl OR Cary OR Caryn OR Carys OR Cascadia OR Casey OR Casilda OR Casondra OR Cassandra OR Cassia OR Cassiel OR Casta OR Castalia OR Catalin OR Catalina OR Catalonia OR Catarina OR Catava OR Caterina OR Cathay OR Cathee OR Catherine OR Cathie OR Cathleen OR Cathlene OR Cathy OR Catrin OR Catriona OR Cauvery OR Cayla OR Cayleigh OR Ceana OR Cecania OR Cecia OR Cecile OR Cecilia OR Cecily OR Ceinwen OR Celandia OR Celandine OR Celena OR Celene OR Celeste OR Celestyn OR Celia OR Celie OR Celina OR Celine OR Cerdwin OR Cerelia OR Ceres OR Ceridwen OR Cerise OR Chaitaly OR Chaitra OR Chalsie OR Chana OR Chanah OR Chance OR Chandani OR Chandi OR Chane OR Chanel OR Chantal OR Chantel OR Charis OR Charisma OR Charissa OR Charisse OR Charity OR Charla OR Charlee OR Charleen OR Charleigh OR Charlene OR Charline OR Charlot OR Charlotte OR Charmaine OR Charmian OR Charo OR Charu OR Chastity OR Chavi OR Chay OR Chaya OR Chaylen OR Chelle OR Chelsa OR Chelsea OR Chelsi OR Chelsia OR Chenoa OR Cher OR Cheri OR Cherie OR Cherilyn OR Cherise OR Cherish OR Cherlin OR Cherry OR Cheryl OR Chesna OR Chevonne OR Chhavvi OR Chhaya OR Chiara OR Chika OR Chilali OR Chimalis OR Chipo OR Chiquita OR Chitra OR Chitrangda OR Chizu OR Chloe OR Chloris OR Cho OR Choden OR Chow OR Chrissy OR Christa OR Christabel OR Christal OR Christea OR Christel OR Christelle OR Christian OR Christiana OR Christie OR Christina OR Christine OR Christmas OR Christy OR Chruse OR Chrysantha OR Chrysilla OR Chyou OR Ciannait OR Ciar OR Ciara OR Cicely OR Cicily OR Cilla OR Cinderella OR Cindy OR Cindylou OR Cinnabar OR Cinnamon OR Circe OR Cirea OR Cissy OR Claiborne OR Claire OR Clara OR Clarabelle OR Clare OR Clarice OR Clarinda OR Clarine OR Clarissa OR Claudia OR Clematis OR Clemence OR Clementine OR Cleo OR Cleomenes OR Cleopatra OR Cleta OR Cleva OR Cliantha OR Clio OR Clodagh OR Clodia OR Clorinda OR Cloris OR Clotilda OR Clove OR Clover OR Clymene OR Cochiti OR Cody OR Colenso OR Colette OR Colleen OR Colletta OR Collette OR Columba OR Columbia OR Columbine OR Concepcion OR Concordia OR Conncetta OR Connie OR Constance OR Consuela OR Consuelo OR Coorah OR Cora OR Corabelle OR Coral OR Coralia OR Coralie OR Corazon OR Corbin OR Cordelia OR Coreen OR Corentine OR Corey OR Corin OR Corina OR Corinda OR Corine OR Corinna OR Corinne OR Corliss OR Cornelia OR Cornelian OR Corona OR Corowa OR Corrine OR Cory OR Cosette OR Cosima OR Cossette OR Courtney OR Crescent OR Cressida OR Crisiant OR Crispina OR Cristin OR Cristina OR Cristine OR Cristiona OR Cristy OR Crystal OR Curissa OR Cuyler OR Cybele OR Cybil OR Cybill OR Cynara OR Cyndi OR Cynere OR Cynthia OR Cypriana OR Cyprien OR Cyrena OR Cyrene OR Cyrilla OR Cytheria OR Cyzarine)

Yes, LinkedIn can handle that 3800+ character (incl. spaces) search if you cram all of it into the First Name field:

All is Not Perfect

When you couple a first name search string of that size with a keyword and/or title search, I’ve found I sometimes get whitescreens – no results, but no errors either. I’ve also found that sometimes I get names that I definitely didn’t search for, such as “Chris,” when using the first name string I listed above combined with a keyword search. I’m not exactly certain what’s going on there (but I do have my theories…).

Although the huge first name searches definitely work (the size of the search string doesn’t prevent search execution), it seems to help to chop up the names searches somewhat when combining names searches with keywords and titles. Not only does it help with search performance, it also seems to help with relevance (less/no results creep into names not searched for). 

For example, here is a combination of 112 first names beginning with C and a keyword of “Java:”

One Step Further

Although the site I pulled the first names beginning with “C” from was somewhat of a mixture of nationality/ethnicity, you can certainly search for names from specific countries/ethnicities – Hispanic, Indian, Chinese – whatever suits your particular need.

Limitations

Sourcing by name can and will yield some false positives – it would be impossible to be guaranteed to only be returning results of a specific gender or ethnicity. It’s also quite challenging to compile a 100% complete list of names – can you ever be certain you’re searching for them all? I think not.

However, given LinkedIn’s ability to process very long search strings, it is quite easy to search by large collections of first names that have a high probability of returning results of a specific gender and/or ethnicity/nationality.

One Last Trick

When searching LinkedIn for any combination of keywords and/or title, if you were in need of targeting gender – you can add (she OR “she’s” OR her OR herself) to your keyword string. 

While the keywords won’t highlight in your search results – they are most certainly there, and they are pulled from hits in the LinkedIn profile and the recommendations as well, where they are especially telling.

Of course, this technique is even more limiting than searching by first name and only finds a fraction of the total available results, but it can be used as a quick “first pass,” and it does have a high degree of specificity.

Happy hunting!