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Grab your lunch and put your phone on Do Not Disturb, because today we’re talking about what’s happening over on LinkedIn.
Your feed has felt a little off lately, and there’s a reason for that. A July 2026 report from AI detection company Pangram Labs found that LinkedIn accounted for 62% of all flagged AI-generated content across the platforms it scanned, even though LinkedIn posts made up only a third of what got scanned.
LinkedIn has pushed back against the flood of generic AI content by rebuilding parts of its feed-ranking system, and the company describes the algorithm as now demoting formulaic, AI-sounding posts in favor of original ideas and first-person experiences.
(Side note: I covered this a couple of weeks ago in “Blending in with the bots?” If that holds, sounding like a machine right now is going to work against you.)
Today I’m walking you through what that shift means for your profile, a quick audit you can knock out before your lunch break ends, and how to actually show up in the feed under the new rules.
Let’s dive in.
The Mid-Year Profile Audit
Use the rest of your lunch break to check these three things.
1. Your Headline: Write for “Semantic Search”
The old way: “Senior Product Manager at Company Name.”
The 2026 way: [Who you help] + [How you solve it] + [Social proof or metric].
LinkedIn’s new AI-powered search lets recruiters type natural-language prompts, such as “find me someone who’s scaled a remote customer success team.” That’s your sign to ditch the rigid corporate title and load your headline with descriptive, outcome-focused keywords so the AI actually surfaces your profile. A strong headline is the first step to owning your niche.
Mine currently reads: "LinkedIn Ghostwriter for Executives & Founders | I turn a 30-minute conversation into a month of content that actually sounds like you."
For a while I ran the classic version instead: [my title] + [who I help] + [a personal tidbit]
Nothing wrong with that, but it didn't say what actually sets me apart, so I rewrote it to lead with my process and the outcome instead.
2. The Banner: Utilize Your Dead Space
Most people fill their background banner with a generic stock photo or a city skyline, leaving that space to go to waste. Treat your banner like a billboard instead. It should communicate what you do either as a value proposition or as a direct call to action (e.g., “DM me ‘SALES’ to fix your outbound sales”).
3. Experience & Skills: Feed the AI Crawlers
LinkedIn recently doubled the number of skills slots on profiles, from 50 to 100, so map your primary skills directly to your past job roles. When you write your bullet points in your Experience section, lead with quantified outcomes instead of responsibilities. Swap “Managed a team” for “Boosted team productivity by 25% in 6 months using agile workflows.”
How to “Show Up” Right Now
To stay on the good side of LinkedIn’s current algorithm, start following these rules ASAP.
As I talked about in “7 reactions. 0 comments. 1 bruised ego.”, sometimes the problem is less about your hook and more about how you’re playing the algorithm’s game.
Stop doing “lazy reposts”: Hitting the basic “Repost” button without adding your own commentary gets far less distribution now. A “repost with your thoughts” functions more like a new post in the algorithm’s eyes. Hit “Quote Post” instead and add a few sentences of your own perspective, not just a one-line reaction.
Skip the low-effort comment: Standard likes carry very little weight now, and a quick “Great post!” comment does little for you either. The algorithm favors comments that add a real thought or a question over generic one-liners. Leave a comment that actually engages with the post, and it’ll do more for your visibility than five quick likes ever could.
Drop the hashtags completely: Richard van der Blom’s 2025 Algorithm Insights Report, which analyzed 1.8 million posts, found that posts with no hashtags outperformed posts that used them by about 8%. LinkedIn’s AI feed engine reads text semantically now (it interprets the meaning of your words), and it reads clusters of hashtags as a spam signal.
The “link in comments” hack isn’t as effective: People still put their links in the first comment to dodge the external link penalty. But unfortunately, LinkedIn caught on to that pattern, too. It can tell when a post is clearly built to funnel people to a link in the comments, and now suppresses posts that do it. If you have LinkedIn Premium, put your link in your Profile Bio or Featured Section instead and direct people there.
That's the vibe check. Every one of these updates is quick, and you can knock them all out before your lunch break wraps up.
See you next Monday at 12 p.m. EST!
Maria
P.S. Put this algorithm shift to work before your next post. Grab my LinkedIn Prompt Guide and my Finish-the-Post Checklist to make sure it lands.
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