Over the years, LinkedIn groups have evolved to provide a quality place for interactions and content while fighting attempts to flood groups with spam or promotional content. Therefore, LinkedIn groups are now private, members-only groups, which means that you can’t join a group without approval or an invitation, and the conversations in a group are not visible to the outside world (including search engines). In this way, only members of the group can see and contribute to conversations.
Following are the two types of LinkedIn groups:
- Standard: These groups are the most common form of LinkedIn groups. They show up in search results and allow any current member of the group to invite and approve their first-degree connections to join the group. Membership in this group is displayed on each member’s profile page under the Interests header; and to see all of a person’s groups, you click See All below the Interests header. The group’s summary page appears in search engine results, but the conversations in the group do not.
- Unlisted: These groups are invitation-only groups; the only way you can join is to be invited by the group owner or manager. These groups do not appear in a LinkedIn search or any search engine, and non-group members can’t see the group logo in a member’s profile page. Examples of unlisted groups include employee-only groups for a company, customer-only groups to handle customer service or new product ideas, and focus groups to share and collaborate on new ideas or discuss potential upcoming products for a company.
