LinkedIn Website Demographics lets website owners track the type of visitors coming to their sites

The tracking capabilities of social media sites has long been a cause for concern, with Facebook being the most notable example. Now the Microsoft-owned professional social network LinkedIn has announced details of a new tracking feature that will be of interest to website owners.

LinkedIn Website Demographics does not (despite what some reports might suggest, #PrivacyKlaxon) allow for the tracking of individual users, but it does give website owners the chance to get a better idea of the demographics of their visitors. This is less about creating targeted content, and more about determining whether existing content is attracting the right audience -- although clearly one leads to the other.

It’s a free reporting tool designed with B2B websites in mind, and it provides an easy-to-interpret, and reliably accurate, means of determining audience breakdown. In short it makes it possible to better tell the types of people that are visiting, breaking this down into categories such as location, industry and job title.

Any tool which offers any form of tracking clearly sets privacy alarm bells ringing, but LinkedIn assures users that there's nothing to worry about:

Website Demographics uses data from LinkedIn’s 500+ million members to provide insight into your company’s website visitors in a way that respects member privacy.

Check out the introductory video which explains how LinkedIn Website Demographics works:

The rollout is due to start in the coming weeks.

Image credit: Urupong Phunkoed / Shutterstock