I Scraped 10,000 LinkedIn Employees Without Login — Here's How

#api

Everyone thinks you need LinkedIn cookies or Sales Navigator to scrape employee data. You don't. Here's how to extract names, titles, and profile URLs from any company — using only Google Search.

The Myth: "You Need LinkedIn Cookies"

Most LinkedIn scrapers work like this:

Log in with your LinkedIn account
Export cookies/session tokens
Make requests to LinkedIn's internal API using those cookies

Problems:

LinkedIn bans accounts that scrape (permanently)
Cookies expire every few days
LinkedIn's anti-bot detection is sophisticated
You're violating LinkedIn's ToS with your personal account

The Reality: Google Already Has the Data

Google indexes millions of public LinkedIn profiles. Search for:

site:linkedin.com/in/ "software engineer" "google"

You'll get hundreds of results like:

John Smith - Software Engineer at Google | LinkedIn
San Francisco Bay Area · 500+ connections · Software Engineer at Google...

That snippet alone gives you: name, title, location, company, and profile URL.

The Technical Approach

Step 1: Build Google SERP URLs

function buildSearchUrl({ companySlug, keywords, location, start }) {
    let query = `site:linkedin.com/in/ "${companySlug}"`;
    if (keywords) query += ` "${keywords}"`;
    if (location) query += ` "${location}"`;
    return `https://www.google.com/search?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}&start=${start * 10}`;
}

Step 2: Parse Profiles from HTML

function extractProfilesFromSerp(html, companySlug) {
    const profiles = [];
    const urlRegex = /linkedin\.com\/in\/([a-zA-Z0-9_%.-]{3,100})/gi;
    let match;
    while ((match = urlRegex.exec(html)) !== null) {
        const slug = match[1].toLowerCase();
        profiles.push({
            profileUrl: `https://www.linkedin.com/in/${slug}/`,
            fullName: parsedName,
            headline: parsedHeadline,
            company: companySlug,
        });
    }
    return profiles;
}

Results: What You Actually Get

Field	Example
fullName	Jan Curn
headline	VP of Engineering at Apify
profileUrl	linkedin.com/in/jancurn/
location	Prague, Czech Republic

You get ~100 profiles per company per run.

The Easy Way: Use the Hosted Version

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("george.the.developer/linkedin-employee-scraper").call(run_input={
    "companies": ["https://www.linkedin.com/company/google/"],
    "searchQuery": "VP Sales",
    "location": "United States",
    "maxEmployees": 100,
})

for emp in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"{emp['fullName']} — {emp['headline']}")