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Clean Up Your LinkedIn Page

Over the years, LinkedIn has been adding “content” to the data feed and to the right-hand side of the home page which cannot be turned off in the preferences – things like Jobs You May Be Interested In (I’m not) and Companies You May Want To Follow (I don’t). The worst of these is the LinkedIn Today blob at the top of the updates.

LinkedIn Today Blob

LinkedIn Today Blob

When it initially showed up, I put in a ticket asking how to turn it off and was told that they were working on it. Six months later I hadn’t heard back, so I asked again (and again) and they have now informed me that it’s permanent.

Well I’ve decided to make it unpermanent by hiding all these spammy bits with Adblock Plus. (If you are not surfing with an ad blocker, you should. Adblock Plus is simple to install and it will enhance your browsing experience and your life in general.)

LinkedIn Today - Kill It With Fire!

Here’s how to do it…

Update 07 May 2012: Added instructions to remove Sponsored Content
Update 18 July 2014: Added instructions to remove LinkedIn Pulse

Hiding sections using Adblock Plus is pretty straightforward once you figure out the format.  Right-click the Ablock Plus icon and bring up the Filter Preferences.  Under Custom Filters, I have two sections: Exception Rules and Ad Blocking Rules.  Use the Actions drop-down menu on the Ad Blocking Rules to Show Filters.

Adblock Plus Filters

Adblock Plus Filters

For each section you want to hide, click the Add Filter button and enter the text describing what to hide (the rule).  For a lot more information about filters and how to write them, Adblock Plus has a helpful page called Writing Adblock Plus Filters.

I chose to hide the following sections of the page:

  1. Obviously the one that prompted this—the LinkedIn Today blob at the top of the updates.
  2. Down the right-hand side of the page there are several sections  you cannot normally hide including Jobs You May Be Interested In, Companies You May Want To Follow, and Groups You May Like.  They look like this:

    LinkedIn - Groups You May Like

    LinkedIn – Groups You May Like

  3. At the bottom of the right-hand column is a footer with information that’s already at the bottom of the page (a.k.a. the, uh.. footer):

    LinkedIn - Footer

    LinkedIn – Footer

  4. Somewhere in the middle of your feed, there’s a section Discuss your interests by joining a group:

    LinkedIn - Discuss Your Interests

    LinkedIn – Discuss Your Interests

For each of the sections you want to hide, you can click the Add Filter button and copy-paste the text from here:

(These are all pretty straightforward except linkedin-gyml – that’s the Discuss your interests section.)

Now when you reload the page, all these useless distractions will be gone.  Enjoy the simplicity!

Update 07 May 2012: For those of you following along, here’s another one:

This will get rid of the “Sponsored Content” in your feed.

Update 18 July 2014: To remove the super-annoying LinkedIn Pulse, use this:

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11 Comments

  1. ##.feed-update.member-like-share.has-snippets
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    ##.feed-update.lyndaCourse-singleton.has-snippets
    ##.feed-update.people-connect-recommend.has-snippets
    ##.feed-update.company-recommend-job-digest.has-snippets
    ##.feed-update.pulse-recommend-article-rollup.has-snippets
    ##.feed-update.company-share-article.is-sponsored.has-snippets

  2. Is there any way to eradicate or ghost the section that says “jobs you may be interested in” on the home page?

    • I’ve since switched to using the uBlock Origin plugin – it’s lighter-weight but maybe not quite as user-friendly. The filters are the same though.

      My current list looks like this:

      I think that will get rid of the job stuff for you.

  3. Wow talk about a freaking life saver. Can’t believe there was a REAL way to take care of this!!! I’m just here because of the suggested jobs stuff (growyourcareerbyfollowing, jobsForYou, companiesforyou etc.). I am SO happy at my job why do I have to see LinkedIn trying to show me other positions every single time I log in? Lol.
    THANK YOU!

  4. Just now I cut and paste all of these into adblocker (using Safari) now Pulse and all the other appalling Linkedin advertising is gone!

    I had tried various recommendations from other sites but they didn’t work.

    Thank you Andy for taking the time to post this. Hope other’s that dislike Pulse as much as I do find this page as well.

  5. Thanks for the filter help. Shame there’s soo much junk on linkedin. Don’t use Facebook & finding it hard to come up with reasons to stay on linkedin. Really dislike targeted marketing in general. Thanks again for the help.