The judge's measured behavior — third-party measurement, not platform disclosure (LinkedIn sits at "inferrable" on the legibility axis, open-sourcing-the-judge).
The macro nerf (2025)
Platform-wide, year over year: views −50%, engagement −25%, follower growth −59%. The algorithm reweighted toward relevance over reach: older posts (2–3 weeks) resurface by topic fit; the "golden hour" weakened, though the first 30–90 minutes still matter. Organic LinkedIn is a shrinking pool in which share can still be gained (justin-welsh-the-content-matrix gained through the nerf).
Measured weights and formats
- A comment ≈ 15× a like; dwell time and shares weigh heavily; polls are dead (0.07% engagement rate).
- Document/PDF carousels are the top format (6.60% engagement vs 5.60% video); Taplio's independent benchmark corroborates, adding "slide 1 is 80% of carousel success."
- People/selfie images ≈ +50% engagement; short vertical video pushed hard 2025–26 (+69% YoY), though the dedicated video feed was added then removed in early 2025.
- External links in the post body: −30–60% reach — the reason for the universal "link in comments" behavior.
The structural fact for small accounts
Only ~31% of the feed comes from 1st-degree connections — distribution is interest-routed, so a small, focused account can out-reach a 10×-larger unfocused one. Followers and reach are decoupled, in the small account's favor.
Caveats
All third-party inference; van der Blom's is the largest sample but still correlational; formats rotate as the platform counter-tunes (polls died after being the 2021 meta; carousels may follow).
PRINCIPLES
- Optimize for comments, not likes — a 15× weight difference makes the open question the highest-value sentence in a post.
- Native or nothing: the link tax (−30–60%) means the artifact must live in the post; conversion goes in comments or profile.
- Focus beats followers: interest-routing (69% non-network feed) is the small operator's subsidy.
Sources: Algorithm Insights Report 2025 coverage · report chapter 1 · leader's guide summary · Taplio benchmark · link-penalty analysis · 2026 feed-mix data