# Why can Perplexity’s API not return LinkedIn URLs while the interface can?

**URL:** <https://community.perplexity.ai/t/why-can-perplexity-s-api-not-return-linkedin-urls-while-the-interface-can/1740>\
**Category:** General\
**Tags:** sonar-api, search-api\
**Created:** [October 2, 2025, 8:23am UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/why-can-perplexity-s-api-not-return-linkedin-urls-while-the-interface-can/1740 "2025-10-02T08:23:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Axel\_A](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.perplexity.ai/axel_a/32/1203_2.png) [@Axel\_A](https://community.perplexity.ai/u/Axel_A)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2025, 8:23am UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/why-can-perplexity-s-api-not-return-linkedin-urls-while-the-interface-can/1740/1 "2025-10-02T08:23:44Z")

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# Why can Perplexity’s API not return LinkedIn URLs while the interface can?

I would like to use the **Perplexity API** for LinkedIn sourcing.  
The idea is simple: give an instruction such as:

> _“Find me a LinkedIn contact, {job post} at {company}, and return only the profile URL.”_

## Findings

- **Via the Perplexity interface (site/app):**  
It works. The tool finds profiles, provides a hyperlink to the LinkedIn profile, and sometimes even additional contact information.

- **Via the Chat Completion API:**  
Doesn’t work.  
No matter how I phrase the prompt (I tried multiple variations), the answer is always a tutorial like:  
_“Open your browser, go to Google, search for ‘LinkedIn’…”_

- **Via the Search API:**  
Same issue. Impossible to get any result coming from LinkedIn. I only have some other websites like blogs.  
I even tried dork-style queries like:

## My questions

1. **Why this difference between the Perplexity interface and its APIs?**

2. **How does the Perplexity Search API actually work?**

* * *

👉 Has anyone already dug into how Perplexity’s Search API works?  
👉 And more importantly, is there any _official_ way to get LinkedIn results through the API (as you can through the interface)?

Thank you for your help.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mahesh\_Chandran\_G](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.perplexity.ai/mahesh_chandran_g/32/1290_2.png) [@Mahesh\_Chandran\_G](https://community.perplexity.ai/u/Mahesh_Chandran_G)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/why-can-perplexity-s-api-not-return-linkedin-urls-while-the-interface-can/1740/2 "2025-10-07T11:31:36Z")

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Hi, I am running into the same issue. Did you find any solutions for this? Really frustrating because the web interface returns the correct information but not the Chat api

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Palak\_Jain](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/community.perplexity.ai/palak_jain/32/1579_2.png) [@Palak\_Jain](https://community.perplexity.ai/u/Palak_Jain)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://community.perplexity.ai/t/why-can-perplexity-s-api-not-return-linkedin-urls-while-the-interface-can/1740/3 "2025-10-27T18:14:59Z")

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Linkedin’s robot.txt disallows most AI bots and infact even AI user interfaces. It just looks like the user interface are working around some compliance loophole which is riskier to exploit with APIs, used by businesses. Also, Gemini’s UI actually does obey this and does not crawl linkedin ([https://www.linkedin.com/robots.txt](https://www.linkedin.com/robots.txt))