LinkedIn headline examples: we measured 62 of the ones everyone hands out
Every example headline in the two top ranking guides is longer than 60 characters, and 82 percent are longer than 70, which is roughly where a headline stops being visible in the places it is actually seen. None of them gets past 110 characters, out of the 220 available. They are all crammed into the one zone that is too long to read and too short to index.
Write the first 60 characters so they make sense on their own, then keep going to about 120. The first part is what a human reads, because that is roughly all that survives in search results, in the feed and on a phone. The rest is what LinkedIn's search has to work with. Almost every example headline in circulation gets this backwards: too long to be read whole, too short to use the space that is actually there.
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What 62 example headlines actually measure
We took the two guides ranking for this exact term on 5 September 2026, copied every example headline they publish, and counted the characters. Here is the distribution. No commentary is needed on the first row.
| Measure | Result | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Headlines measured | 62 | From the two top ranking guides, both linked |
| Longer than 60 characters | 62 of 62, 100 percent | All of them exceed the conservative visible window |
| Longer than 70 characters | 51 of 62, 82 percent | Most exceed the generous one too |
| Longer than 110 characters | 0 of 62 | Not one gets even halfway to the 220 limit |
| Mean length | 80 characters | Median 79, shortest 63, longest 110 |
| Use the pipe format | 59 of 62, 95 percent | Role | Skill | Aspiration, almost without exception |
| Three or more segments | 38 of 62, 61 percent | The third segment is the invisible one |
The pattern is not that these headlines are bad. Most of them read perfectly well as sentences. The pattern is that they are all the same length, and it is the wrong length: comfortably past the point where a reader stops seeing them and nowhere near the 220 characters LinkedIn gives you for search. Whoever wrote them was writing for a page, not for a profile.
Examples that survive being cut
These are written for this article rather than lifted from real profiles. The rule behind each one is the same: the lead segment is a complete, self contained statement under 60 characters, so when a phone or a search result cuts it there, nothing is left dangling. What follows is the part that exists mostly for search.
| Lead segment, what people read | Chars | Full headline continues with |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency plumber, Leeds | Same day, no weekend rate | 52 | Boilers, leaks, bathrooms | Gas Safe registered since 2011 |
| Accountant for UK small businesses | Self assessment, VAT | 57 | Xero and FreeAgent | Taking 4 new clients this quarter |
| Brand designer for independent food brands | 42 | Packaging first | 40+ independents | Bristol studio, clients anywhere |
| Dentist and practice owner, Manchester | 38 | Nervous patients welcome | Implants, whitening, routine | NHS and private |
| Junior developer | React and TypeScript | Open to work | 54 | 3 shipped side projects | Bootcamp graduate, September 2026 |
| Enterprise sales, cybersecurity | 9 years, UK and DACH | 54 | Closed 14M in new business | Series C stage, currently hiring |
| Marketing manager, B2B SaaS | Demand gen, lifecycle email | 57 | HubSpot and Customer.io | Built the function twice from zero |
| Operations consultant for manufacturers under 200 staff | 55 | Lean, scheduling, stock | 12 years on factory floors first |
Read the middle column and notice what is missing from all eight: the word passionate, the word driven, the word innovative, and any phrase of the shape helping X to Y. None of them are banned and all of them are what the sample above spends its third segment on. They are the part nobody sees, so if you are going to lose a segment, lose that one deliberately rather than by accident.
The formula, which is shorter than the ones in circulation
- Say what you are, in the words somebody would search. Plumber, accountant, developer. Not growth architect, not results partner.
- Add the one qualifier that disqualifies people, which is the useful kind. A place, an industry, a company size, a stage. This is what turns a title into an answer.
- Stop at 60 characters and read it back. If it works as a standalone line, the truncation cannot hurt you.
- Then add proof, tools and specifics up to about 120. Numbers, named software, certifications, a year. This half is for search, so use nouns rather than adjectives.
- Leave the aspiration out. Every headline in the measured sample that used its third segment for an aspiration spent its invisible space on the least checkable thing in it.
If the headline is settled and the profile is the next job, LinkedIn's image sizes cover the banner, where the safe area is genuinely lopsided and most advice about it is borrowed from Facebook. If the profile is settled and the question is what to actually publish, the algorithm piece is the one to read, and Copilot prompts for LinkedIn posts is the practical companion to it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the LinkedIn headline character limit?
220 characters. In a sample of 62 example headlines from the two top ranking guides we measured on 5 September 2026, not one reached 110 characters, so the limit is almost never the constraint people think it is.
How many characters of a LinkedIn headline are actually visible?
LinkedIn does not publish the number. Maintained references give roughly 60 to 70 characters in search results and on mobile, though other sources claim 100 to 150. Write the first 60 characters to stand alone and the answer stops mattering.
What makes a good LinkedIn headline?
A searchable job title, one qualifier that narrows it, and a full stop at around 60 characters so it survives truncation. Then proof, tools or specifics out to about 120 characters for search. Leave aspirational phrasing out, since it occupies the part nobody sees.
Should a LinkedIn headline use the pipe format?
It is fine and 95 percent of published examples use it. The problem is not the pipe, it is the third segment: 61 percent of measured examples use three segments, and the third one falls outside the visible window in most places a headline appears.
How long should a LinkedIn headline be?
About 120 characters, with the first 60 forming a complete statement. That uses roughly half the 220 limit for search while keeping the read part intact. The examples in circulation average 80 characters, which is too long to read whole and too short to index well.
How we researched this
- The counts in this article are ours and they were produced the dull way. We took the two guides ranking for this term on 5 September 2026, copied every example headline they publish, and measured the character length of each one. That is 62 headlines. Both guides are linked below so the sample can be rebuilt and disagreed with.
- Character length is counted including spaces and the pipe separators, because that is how a character limit counts them. Two examples containing emoji were included with the emoji removed, since an emoji's contribution to a limit is inconsistent across platforms and we did not want an arguable four characters to move a percentage.
- The truncation figures this article measures against are not ours and they are not LinkedIn's either, which is the honest and slightly unsatisfying position. LinkedIn publishes the 220 character limit in its own interface. It does not publish where a headline gets cut in search, in the feed or on a phone. The roughly 60 to 70 character figure is what maintained third party references give, one of which is cited, and the article says plainly that the field disagrees on it.
- Where the sources conflict we have printed the conflict rather than picked a side. One reference gives the limit as 220 and the visible window as 60 to 70 characters. Another gives 220 on desktop and 240 on mobile with 100 to 150 visible. Those cannot all be right and we have not pretended to know which is.
- The example headlines in the second half are written by us for this article, not harvested from real profiles. Every one was measured rather than estimated, and both its lead segment and its full length are printed next to it so you can check the arithmetic instead of trusting it.
- We sell a tool that writes social content. It does not write LinkedIn headlines and there is no version of this page that ends in a useful pitch, which is disclosed at the end.
Sources
