Mason Web Analytics

LinkedIn Website Demographics / Google Analytics Comparison

We have implemented the LinkedIn Insight tag on the core website.

What is the LinkedIn Insight Tag

This is a tag from LinkedIn that purports to provide us demographic data about our website visitors including professional information such as job title, industry, etc.

Questions

Where does this data come from?
No idea. I have found essentially no information about the technical details of how it works or what data it draws from.

Is it reliable?
Again, no idea. Perhaps we could get a clue as to how reliable it is by comparing it against another data source, like Google Analytics.
Most data that it provides (job industry, job title, etc.) are not available in Google Analytics. One data element is: country.

Comparison of Data between LinkedIn and Google Analytics: Country

I ran this analysis on March 26th. The data show below is from the previous 30 days leading up to March 26th.

LinkedIn Website Demographics: Country

Google Analytics: Pageviews by Country

Linked In
Country Percent of Total Pageviews
United States 90.1%
India 2.9%
Canada 0.4%
China 0.4%
United Kingdom 0.3%
Iran 0.3%
Nigeria 0.3%
Saudi Arabia 0.3%
Brazil 0.2%
Bangladesh 0.2%
United Arab Emirates 0.2%
Pakistan 0.2%
Ghana 0.2%
Spain 0.2%
Nepal 0.2%
Turkey 0.2%
Philippines 0.1%
Netherlands 0.1%
Germany 0.1%
Sweden 0.1%
Italy 0.1%
Korea 0.1%
France 0.1%
Colombia 0.1%
Kenya 0.1%
Google Analytics
Country Percent of Total Pageviews
United States 91.55%
India 2.12%
China 0.60%
South Korea 0.56%
Saudi Arabia 0.31%
United Kingdom 0.29%
Nigeria 0.26%
Canada 0.25%
Pakistan 0.17%
United Arab Emirates 0.16%
Turkey 0.14%
Iran 0.14%
Germany 0.14%
Brazil 0.13%
Taiwan 0.12%
Bangladesh 0.11%
Japan 0.11%
Spain 0.11%
Italy 0.10%
Nepal 0.10%
Philippines 0.09%
Ghana 0.09%
Vietnam 0.09%
France 0.08%
Indonesia 0.08%

Conclusion

These two sets of data do not match.
Personally, I trust the one that provides more technical detail about how it works (Google).