🔗 LinkedIn Mass People Profile Finder

Bulk-resolve LinkedIn profile URLs from free-text queries — in seconds, at scale.

Provide a list of search queries (e.g. "Michael Dell Dell Technologies CEO") and the actor returns the first matching public LinkedIn profile URL for each. No LinkedIn login needed — results come from public search engines.

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✨ Why Choose This Actor?

• ⚡ Bulk lookup — process hundreds of names in one run, in parallel
• 🌐 Smart proxy ladder — starts direct, auto-escalates to datacenter → residential only when blocked
• 🛡️ Anti-block resilient — randomized user agents, exponential backoff, sticky escalation
• 💾 Live results — every match streams to the dataset the moment it's found, so partial output is always preserved
• 🔁 Dual-engine fallback — DuckDuckGo primary, Bing fallback
• 🎯 Clean output — canonical https://www.linkedin.com/in/<slug> for every hit

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🔑 Key Features

Feature	Description
🧾 Bulk input	Paste any number of queries — one per line
🌐 Auto proxy fallback	No proxy → Datacenter → Residential (3 retries)
📡 Real-time output	Each result is pushed live to the dataset
⚙️ Configurable	Workers, delay, retries, timeout all tunable
🎨 Clean URLs	All output normalized to https://www.linkedin.com/in/<slug>

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📥 Input

{
  "queries": [
    "\"Michael Dell\" \"Dell Technologies\" CEO",
    "\"Chuck Robbins\" CISCO CEO"
  ],
  "workers": 3,
  "baseDelay": 0.5,
  "retries": 3,
  "timeout": 15,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": false }
}

Field	Type	Description
queries	array<string>	Required. Free-text search queries, one per item. Use quotes for exact-match phrases.
workers	integer	Parallel queries. Default 3. Higher = faster but more block risk.
baseDelay	number	Base delay (sec) between requests. Default 0.5.
retries	integer	Max retries per engine on transient failure. Default 3.
timeout	integer	HTTP request timeout (sec). Default 15.
proxyConfiguration	object	Proxy override. Default: no proxy — actor escalates automatically if blocked.

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📤 Output

Each item in the dataset:

{
  "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdell",
  "input": "\"Michael Dell\" \"Dell Technologies\" CEO"
}

For failed lookups:

{
  "linkedin": null,
  "input": "some unfindable query",
  "error": "bing: no result"
}

Field	Description
🔗 linkedin	Canonical LinkedIn profile URL, or null if not found
🧾 input	The exact query that was searched
⚠️ error	Failure reason (only present when linkedin is null)

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🚀 How to Use (Apify Console)

1. Log in at https://console.apify.com → Actors.
2. Open LinkedIn Mass People Profile Finder.
3. Paste your queries — one per line — in the Search Queries field.
4. (Optional) Tune workers / delay / retries.
5. Click ▶ Start.
6. Watch logs in real time — found profiles appear immediately.
7. Open the Output tab when the run completes; export to JSON / CSV / XLSX.

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🤖 Use via API

Run synchronously and get results in one call:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "queries": [
      "\"Michael Dell\" \"Dell Technologies\" CEO",
      "\"Chuck Robbins\" CISCO CEO"
    ]
  }'

Or asynchronously:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/<ACTOR_ID>/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO"]}'

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🌐 Proxy Strategy

The actor uses a sticky tiered fallback:

1. 🟢 Direct (no proxy)        ← start here
2. 🟡 Apify Datacenter Proxy   ← on first block
3. 🔴 Apify Residential Proxy  ← if datacenter blocked too (3 retries)

Once the actor escalates to a higher tier, it stays there for the rest of the run — no flapping. Each escalation is clearly logged so you can see exactly when and why it happened.

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🎯 Best Use Cases

• 🧑‍💼 Sales & lead enrichment — turn a CSV of names + companies into LinkedIn URLs
• 📊 Market research — find executive profiles for company analysis
• 🤝 Recruiting — bulk-resolve candidate profiles from spreadsheets
• 🔬 Data enrichment pipelines — feed CRM rows with normalized LinkedIn URLs

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💰 Pricing (Pay-Per-Event)

Event	What it covers
apify-actor-start	One-time charge per run (covers startup)
apify-default-dataset-item	Charged per successfully resolved profile

You only pay for profiles we find — failed lookups still appear in the dataset for transparency but do not bill the result-item event.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Do I need a LinkedIn account or cookie? No. The actor only queries public search engines.

Q: Why is the output URL different from what's on Google? We canonicalize every URL to https://www.linkedin.com/in/<slug> regardless of the country subdomain (e.g. uk.linkedin.com/in/…) for easier downstream matching.

Q: What if a query has multiple matching profiles? We return the first result. Make queries as specific as possible (name + company + title) for accuracy.

Q: Will I get rate-limited? Possible if you push workers too high. The actor handles this gracefully — it slows down, switches engines, and escalates to a paid proxy tier automatically. Default workers=3 is safe.

Q: Is this legal? Yes — we only query publicly indexed search results. You are responsible for downstream compliance with LinkedIn's ToS, GDPR/CCPA, and any applicable anti-spam laws.

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⚖️ Cautions / Legal

• Data is collected only from publicly available sources (search engine result pages).
• Do not scrape private accounts or content behind authentication.
• The end user is responsible for legal compliance (GDPR, CCPA, anti-spam laws, target site ToS).
• Be a good citizen — keep concurrency moderate.

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💬 Support & Feedback

Issues, feature requests, or just want to chat? Open an issue or contact the maintainer through your Apify Console messages.