---
type: trekresearch-brief
created: 2026-05-29
question: "What does the 2026 LinkedIn feed-ranking system actually reward — comment-vs-reaction weighting, document/carousel engagement rate, external-link reach effect and first-comment status, the early-engagement window incl. delayed reinjection, and the deployed ranking model's verifiable name and date — with a source and confidence per claim?"
confidence: 0.82
dimensions: 8
mcp_servers_used: [tavily, gemini-deep-research]
local_agents_used: []
external_agents_used: [docs-researcher, community-researcher, security-researcher, contrarian-researcher, gemini-bridge]
---

# 2026 LinkedIn Feed-Ranking — Canonical Signal Statement

> Generated by trekresearch (high-effort swarm: 4 external + Gemini) on 2026-05-29.
> Topic 1 of 3 for the linkedin-studio remediation. This is the **substrate**: the
> Phase-0 fixes that reconcile the plugin's contradictory algorithm stats consume it.

## Research Question

What does the 2026 LinkedIn feed-ranking system actually reward — comment-vs-reaction
weighting, document/carousel engagement rate, external-link reach effect and the
current first-comment-workaround status, the early-engagement ("golden hour") window
incl. delayed/evergreen reinjection, and the deployed ranking model's verifiable name
and deployment date — with a primary or credible source and a confidence level per claim?

## Executive Summary

The plugin's algorithm "facts" are **directionally right but numerically indefensible**:
every specific magnitude it states (comment "15x", carousel "6.6%"/"1.92%", link
"40-50%"/"25-40%", a clean "−40-60% before distribution", "360Brew, January 2026") is
either third-party-only, self-contradictory, conflated across denominators, or — for the
model name/date — **not establishable from any primary source.** What IS defensible and
high-confidence: an LLM-based relevance-ranking system is live in 2026; the engagement
hierarchy is **saves > shares > quality comments > reactions** with **dwell-time a
top-tier signal** (the only two signals LinkedIn officially confirms by name are *dwell
time* and *topic/interest relevance*); documents/carousels are the #1 format; body links
reduce reach (magnitude contested, ~19–60% across studies, LinkedIn denies it is
*intentional*); the early window is **60–90 min** (90 is the 2026 consensus); and — the
single best-supported actionable finding — **LinkedIn now officially suppresses generic
AI "slop"** (named executive, May 2026), which directly justifies a short-form de-AI gate.
**Key caveat:** treat every number as directional and per-account-testable; encode
*ordering + sourced direction*, never hard coefficients. (Overall confidence 0.82 — high
on direction, medium on magnitude.)

## Dimensions

### D1. Deployed ranking model — name & date — Confidence: high (on the negative claim)

**External findings:**
- The arXiv paper *"360Brew: A Decoder-only Foundation Model…"* (2501.16450) is dated
  **2025-01-27**, self-labels as a **"research pre-production model" (V1.0, 150B params)**
  claiming *offline* parity only, and was **withdrawn 2025-08-23** (submitter lacked
  license rights). It is neither a deployment announcement nor a clean citable artifact.
  [arXiv 2501.16450]
- LinkedIn's own 2026 communications describe a live LLM-based feed system but the
  **production name is not reliably establishable**: the docs + contrarian agents both
  read a LinkedIn Engineering post ("Generative Recommender / GR", attributed to Hristo
  Danchev, 2026-03-12); the independent Gemini pass **flagged a third-party citation of
  that same post as possibly fabricated** (Danchev's verifiable authorship is on AWS
  OpenSearch work). So even the "GR" name carries a provenance question.
- "January 2026" as a deployment date appears in **no** primary source; it is third-party
  extrapolation from the paper's Jan-**2025** date.

**Contradictions:** docs/contrarian treat the GR engineering blog as primary; Gemini
casts doubt on its provenance. **Conservative resolution:** assert neither name nor date.
An LLM relevance-ranking system is live (high confidence); its *deployed name* and
*go-live date* are **not publishable as fact**.

### D2. Comment vs reaction weighting + saves/dwell hierarchy — Confidence: high (ordering) / medium (magnitude)

**External findings:**
- "Comment = 15x a like" is **unverified folklore** — no primary source; meet-lea labels
  it "industry estimate, original source unclear." Sources span 2x–15x with no anchor.
  AuthoredUp's NLP-quality-scored analysis puts the real comment-vs-like effect **~2x**.
  [authoredup.com/blog/linkedin-algorithm; meet-lea]
- Convergent across AuthoredUp + Vertebrae + van der Blom (1.8M): **a save ≈ 5x a like,
  ≈ 2x a comment** — saves are the top signal (and a follow-graph signal: saving a post
  gives the author's next post ~80% feed-appearance odds). The plugin's stray "5x" is the
  **saves** number mis-assigned to comments.
- **Officially confirmed (the only two named):** *dwell time* is a ranking signal
  (LinkedIn Eng "Understanding feed dwell time" 2020; "Leveraging Dwell Time" /
  Auto-Normalized-Long-Dwell model 2024); LinkedIn describes active (like/comment/share)
  vs passive (click/skip/long-dwell) tasks but **assigns no weights**. [linkedin.com/blog/engineering/feed/leveraging-dwell-time-to-improve-member-experiences-on-the-linkedin-feed]

**Resolution (for the canonical statement):** order is **saves > shares > quality
comments > reactions/likes**, with **dwell-time top-tier**; comment ≈ 2x like
(quality-weighted, single-vendor). Drop "15x" and the comment-"5x" entirely.

### D3. Document/carousel engagement rate — Confidence: high (format rank) / medium (number)

**External findings:**
- Three independent large-N studies agree documents/carousels are **#1**: Socialinsider
  (1.3M) native document **7.00%** (multi-image 6.80%), Buffer (2M) carousel **21.77%**
  median, Metricool (673K) **49.52%**. The 7 vs 21.77 vs 49.52 spread is a
  **denominator/methodology artifact**, not disagreement about the winner.
  [socialinsider.io/social-media-benchmarks/linkedin; buffer.com/resources/data-best-content-format-social-media/; metricool.com/linkedin-trends/]
- The "6.6%" is a **stale 2024 multi-image** figure (now ~6.45% multi-image / ~7.00%
  document) — and LinkedIn removed native carousels Dec 2023, so "carousel" = PDF document
  post; the multi-image↔document conflation is real.
- **The plugin's "1.92%" is NOT a carousel rate** — it matches the **personal-profile
  per-post baseline** (Metricool personal 2.60% / company 1.74%; AuthoredUp 2.10–2.67%).
  The plugin mixed a format benchmark with a personal-profile baseline.

**Resolution:** documents/carousels = top format (high confidence). For a number use
**~7% (Socialinsider, conservative, company-page per-impression)**; never present 1.92%
as a carousel figure; state the format-vs-account-type distinction.

### D4. External-link reach effect + first-comment status — Confidence: medium (effect) / low (intent, first-comment)

**External findings:**
- A body-link reach reduction is real and observational. The most rigorous source
  (Ordinal, 900K posts, Mann-Whitney p<0.001) shows it **changed over time: 5% (2023) →
  35% (2024) → 42% (2025) → ~38% (2026 YTD)**, 37-month avg 26.5%. van der Blom reports a
  milder **~18.8% median**; DigitalApplied/Gemini cite **~60%**. So the plugin's "40-50%"
  ≈ the 2024-25 peak and "25-40%" ≈ the long-run average — **both partial views of one
  moving number.** [tryordinal.com/blog/linkedin-link-penalty-study]
- **LinkedIn denies an *intentional* penalty** (Sr. Director Product, reported Aug 2025):
  no penalty "if the post leads with value"; the effect is engagement-driven, not a flat
  tax. The observed reach gap is real **regardless of intent**. [threads.com/@mattnavarra/post/DOWa_61Cown/]
- First-comment workaround is **genuinely contested**: Ordinal data leans "still
  net-positive but reduced (~−5 to −10%)"; multiple 2026 blogs claim it's now detected as
  "bridge behavior" and throttled — but that claim is **practitioner-only, no large-N
  backing.** The one officially-confirmed principle: what gets limited is
  **off-platform-funnel intent + thin standalone value**, *regardless of link location*.

**Resolution:** state it as a **correlational reach reduction (~38% in 2026, contested
band ~19–60%, LinkedIn disputes intent)**, not a hard penalty. Reframe first-comment as
**neither a magic fix nor a confirmed penalty** — lead with standalone value; native
formats are the durable answer. Drop the precise % from the enforcing hook.

### D5. Early-engagement window + evergreen reinjection — Confidence: high (60-90 min) / low (24-72h timing)

**External findings:**
- 2026 consensus has widened from "strict 60 min" to **60–90 min** (90 is van der Blom's
  current figure), with the **first 15–30 min** the highest-leverage sub-window and ~70%
  of reach decided in it. [buffer.com/resources/linkedin-algorithm/; expandi.io/blog/best-time-to-post-on-linkedin/]
- Evergreen resurfacing is **real in direction** (the 2026 relevance model resurfaces
  strong-save / high-dwell posts days-to-weeks later on viewer intent; AuthoredUp: posts
  now live 2–3 weeks vs days) — but **no large-N source confirms a specific "24–72h
  reinjection" rule**; it is intent-driven and irregular.

**Resolution:** "**60–90 min golden window; first 15–30 min highest-leverage**"; describe
evergreen as "**can resurface days-to-weeks later on intent-match**", not a fixed 24–72h
second wave. The plugin both over-indexes the strict first hour AND omits evergreen — fix
both.

### D6. Profile/topic relevance as a ranking input — Confidence: high (signal) / none (the −40-60% figure)

**External findings:**
- **Officially confirmed (qualitatively):** topic/interest relevance drives distribution,
  including beyond your network — Tim Jurka (Head of Feed AI, 2025-08-11): "Exceptional
  content may even be distributed broadly … to members interested in the type of content
  you post, even if they don't follow you." 2026 comms add an Interest Picker + "relevant
  to your interests, not a popularity contest." [linkedin.com/pulse/how-does-linkedin-feed-work-tim-jurka-oxraf]
- **No primary source** states any **−40-60% reach reduction** for off-topic content, nor
  a discrete "validation-before-distribution gate" with a number. That figure is
  third-party.

**Resolution:** keep "profile/topic alignment is a real ranking input" (sourced
direction); **drop the "−40-60% before anyone sees it" figure** entirely.

### D7. Buzzword penalty — Confidence: high (that it is NOT a measured ranking mechanic)

**External findings:**
- **No primary source** ties specific words to a measured reach penalty. Evidence is
  either editorial/clarity advice (Inc.) or unmeasured vendor assertion (linkboost
  "LLMs throttle corporate speak"). A semantic-relevance ranker *may* indirectly favor
  specific over generic phrasing — inferred, not confirmed. [inc.com/...buzzwords; linkboost.co/blog]

**Resolution:** keep buzzword-avoidance as **editorial guidance**, not a "reduces reach"
ranking claim. (The plugin already enforces a buzzword list via a hook — keep the list,
fix the *justification*.)

### D8. AI-content down-rank — Confidence: high (officially confirmed) — *the build-justifying finding*

**External findings:**
- **Officially confirmed, named executive:** LinkedIn VP & Executive Editor Laura
  Lorenzetti (2026-05-19) confirmed an active program targeting (1) generic AI-written
  posts/comments, (2) automation tools, (3) attention-bait video. Mechanism: ML models
  trained on thousands of human-annotated posts distinguish "original thinking" from
  "posts lacking substance"; **low-quality-flagged posts are reach-suppressed (reportedly
  down to first-degree connections), not deleted.** [entrepreneur.com/business-news/linkedin-is-fighting-back-against-ai-slop-and-ai-comments]
- Corroborated: Jobanputra (Feed) — "we actively detect and limit the reach of spammy or
  low-quality content, including bot-generated posts." Originality.ai (8,795 posts):
  likely-AI posts saw **45% less engagement** (correlational). [prdaily.com/...guardians-of-the-feed; originality.ai/blog/ai-content-published-linkedin]
- Also officially confirmed and relevant: **engagement-pod crackdown** (VP Product
  Gyanda Sachdeva, 2026-02-16 — auto-comments demoted out of "Most Relevant", scoped to
  own network, repeat offenders restricted). [socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-outlines-more-measures-to-combat-engagement-pods/812290/]

**Resolution:** **build the short-form de-AI / differentiation gate** — it targets an
officially-confirmed suppression surface. Enforce the signals LinkedIn *named* (personal
substance, original thinking, concrete specifics, genuine voice), not an unverified SEO
"tell-list."

## External Knowledge

### Best Practice (official / primary)
Only two ranking signals are officially named: **dwell time** and **topic/interest
relevance**. LinkedIn officially **denies an intentional link penalty** and officially
**confirms an AI-slop down-rank** + **engagement-pod enforcement**. Everything else
(coefficients, multipliers, windows) is third-party.

### Alternatives / contrarian
The contrarian pass refuted 6 of 7 plugin claims **on magnitude/naming, not direction**:
the strategic advice (favor native formats, prompt quality comments, write with
substance, expect link posts to underperform, post when the audience is active) survives;
the specific numbers and the "360Brew, Jan 2026" branding do not. Two need **outright
correction**: the model name/date, and the "no analytics API → CSV only" premise (see D9
in Topic 2 — Member Post Analytics API launched 2025-07-08).

### Known issues
Numbers rot: every magnitude is observational and moves year-to-year (link penalty
5%→42%→38%; carousel 6.6%→6.45%). A fabricated citation ("Hristo Danchev / Mar-12-2026")
is actively circulating — do not propagate any single named-source deployment claim
without first-hand re-verification.

## Gemini Second Opinion

Independent ~22-min deep-research pass (27 grounding sources). Agreements with the swarm:
360Brew is a Jan-**2025** pre-production paper, not a confirmed 2026 production system;
saves/dwell primacy; carousel #1 with methodology-driven rate spread; 90-min window;
**per-post Saves ARE visible in the native UI for your own posts**; a Member Post
Analytics API exists but is gated behind Community Management API approval (not
self-serve). Unique contribution: independently flagged the "Hristo Danchev / March 2026
engineering post" citation as likely **fabricated**, which is *why* this brief refuses to
publish any deployed-model name even though two of the swarm agents cited "GR."

## Synthesis

Three insights emerge only from triangulation:

1. **The plugin's contradictions are mostly denominator/era artifacts, not errors of
   fact.** "40-50% vs 25-40%" = the same link number at peak vs average; "6.6% vs 1.92%"
   = a format benchmark vs a personal-profile baseline; "15x vs 5x" = a folklore comment
   figure vs the real *saves* figure mis-assigned. The fix is therefore **one canonical
   statement that names the era, the denominator, and the account type** — not a hunt for
   "the right number." This is the single most important design instruction for Phase 0.2.

2. **Encode ordering + officially-named signals, not coefficients.** The only durable,
   defensible spine is: *dwell + topic-relevance are the two officially-named signals;
   saves > shares > quality-comments > reactions is the engagement order; documents are
   the top format.* Every coefficient must carry a source + confidence + "directional,
   test per account" caveat. A `references/algorithm-signals-reference.md` rebuilt around
   *named signals + ordering + per-claim source column* makes the contradictions
   structurally impossible to reintroduce.

3. **The two highest-confidence findings each map to a Phase-2 build decision.** The
   officially-confirmed **AI-slop down-rank** justifies the **short-form de-AI gate**
   (D8); the officially-confirmed **link-intent principle** (value-first, location-
   secondary) rewrites the link advice (D4). Both are now grounded in *named-executive*
   sources, not vendor blogs — the strongest evidence in the whole pass.

## Open Questions

- **Deployed model name/date** — unresolvable from open sources and partly contaminated
  by a fabricated citation. *Carry as: do not assert; state "an LLM relevance model is
  live in 2026" only.* No further research will likely fix this before publication.
- **Link-penalty exact magnitude & first-comment status** — genuinely contested
  (~19–60%; first-comment net-positive vs detected). *Carry as a range + "test per
  account"; do not hard-code.*
- **Member Post Analytics API self-serve depth** — answered enough here to act, but is the
  primary subject of **Topic 2** (verify gating + saves-UI before writing boundary prose).

## Recommendation

For the Phase-0 "reconcile to one sourced statement" step, adopt this canonical spine and
make every command/agent cite it:

1. **Model:** "An LLM-based relevance-ranking system is live on LinkedIn in 2026." **No
   name, no date.** Remove "360Brew" and "January 2026" from CLAUDE.md/README/profile.
2. **Signals (officially named):** dwell time; topic/interest relevance. **Engagement
   order:** saves > shares > quality comments > reactions; likes ≈ 1x baseline. No
   coefficients without a source column; comment ≈ 2x like is the most defensible single
   figure (medium).
3. **Format:** documents/carousels are the top organic format (~7%, Socialinsider,
   company-page per-impression). Delete the 1.92% carousel claim (it's a personal-profile
   baseline). Native video #2 and *declining*.
4. **Links:** correlational reach reduction (~38% in 2026; contested ~19–60%); LinkedIn
   denies intentional penalty; value-first matters more than link location; first-comment
   is a hedge, not a fix. Soften the enforcing hook from a hard % mechanic.
5. **Timing:** 60–90 min early window (first 15–30 min highest-leverage); add evergreen
   resurfacing (days-to-weeks, intent-driven); drop the strict-60-min fixation and the
   "24–72h reinjection" precision.
6. **Profile/topic:** real ranking input (keep); **drop the −40-60% figure.**
7. **Buzzwords:** editorial guidance only (keep the list, fix the "reduces reach" claim).
8. **Build the de-AI gate** (D8, officially-confirmed surface) and **reframe link advice
   around intent** (D4). Both are Phase-2 builds with named-executive backing.

## Sources

| # | Source | Type | Quality | Used in |
|---|--------|------|---------|---------|
| 1 | [arXiv 2501.16450 — 360Brew (withdrawn 2025-08-23)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16450) | official | high | D1 |
| 2 | [LinkedIn Eng — Engineering the next-gen Feed (provenance contested)](https://www.linkedin.com/blog/engineering/feed/engineering-the-next-generation-of-linkedins-feed) | official(?) | low | D1 |
| 3 | [LinkedIn Eng — Leveraging Dwell Time (2024-10-01)](https://www.linkedin.com/blog/engineering/feed/leveraging-dwell-time-to-improve-member-experiences-on-the-linkedin-feed) | official | high | D2 |
| 4 | [Tim Jurka — How Does the LinkedIn Feed Work? (2025-08-11)](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-does-linkedin-feed-work-tim-jurka-oxraf) | official | high | D6 |
| 5 | [AuthoredUp — LinkedIn Algorithm (621K posts)](https://authoredup.com/blog/linkedin-algorithm) | community | medium | D2, D3, D5 |
| 6 | [Socialinsider — LinkedIn benchmarks (1.3M)](https://www.socialinsider.io/social-media-benchmarks/linkedin) | community | medium | D3 |
| 7 | [Buffer — Best Content Format (2M+)](https://buffer.com/resources/data-best-content-format-social-media/) | community | medium | D3 |
| 8 | [Metricool — 2026 LinkedIn study (673K)](https://metricool.com/linkedin-trends/) | community | medium | D3 |
| 9 | [Ordinal — Link Penalty Study (900K, p<0.001)](https://www.tryordinal.com/blog/linkedin-link-penalty-study) | community | medium-high | D4 |
| 10 | [Threads/Matt Navarra — LinkedIn denies intentional link penalty](https://www.threads.com/@mattnavarra/post/DOWa_61Cown/) | official (relayed) | medium | D4 |
| 11 | [Entrepreneur — LinkedIn fights AI slop (Lorenzetti, 2026-05-19)](https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/linkedin-is-fighting-back-against-ai-slop-and-ai-comments) | official (reported) | high | D8 |
| 12 | [PR Daily — Guardians of the Feed (Jobanputra)](https://www.prdaily.com/what-works-and-doesnt-on-linkedin-according-to-guardians-of-the-feed/) | official (reported) | medium-high | D4, D8 |
| 13 | [Social Media Today — engagement-pod crackdown (Sachdeva, 2026-02-16)](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-outlines-more-measures-to-combat-engagement-pods/812290/) | official (reported) | high | D8 |
| 14 | [Originality.ai — AI content on LinkedIn (45% gap)](https://originality.ai/blog/ai-content-published-linkedin) | community | medium | D8 |
| 15 | [van der Blom — Algorithm Insights 2025 (1.8M)](https://www.scribd.com/document/984921783/Algorithm-Insights-Report-2025-chapter-1-Richard-Van-der-Blom) | community | medium | D2, D4, D5 |
| 16 | [meet-lea — LinkedIn Algorithm Explained 2026](https://meet-lea.com/en/blog/linkedin-algorithm-explained) | community | low-medium | D2 |
| 17 | [Microsoft Learn — Member Post Statistics API](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/marketing/community-management/members/post-statistics?view=li-lms-2025-11) | official | high | D2/Topic-2 |
| 18 | [Inc. — buzzwords to scrub](https://www.inc.com/amy-george/14-buzzwords-to-scrub-from-your-linkedin-page-right-now.html) | community | low | D7 |
