How to get the company id from Linkedin Company URL in PHP?

Question

I have the Linkedin company URL as follows,

http://in.linkedin.com/company/abb

and the company ID for ABB limited is 277579. Essentially you can also reach ABB through http://www.linkedin.com/company/277579.

But if I have only http://in.linkedin.com/company/abb. Is it possible to get the company ID through this URL? Does parsing the URL help? Seeking any good method to get the company ID.

Is there any other way to do without using Linkedin API?

Hope I am clear with my question. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Type in your company name in the autocomplete field. Wait until your company name appears as a result. Then click on your company name. Click on Get Code.

<script src="//platform.linkedin.com/in.js" type="text/javascript"> lang: en_US</script>
<script type="IN/FollowCompany" data-id="162479" data-counter="top"></script>

e.g. data-id="162479" is the ID for Apple Company Page

https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/follow-company

Answer 2

I don't know of a way to get this with PHP, so programmatically discovering a company's id may not be an option this way.

However, if you set up a MITM between yourself and LinkedIn.com, you can discover all the network activity between your browser and LinkedIn. A quick way to do this is is by using https://www.owasp.org/index.php/ZAP or http://mitmproxy.org/.

LinkedIn sends the company id of any company page you visit to their ad partners at doubleclick. An example request I discovered is:

https://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/linkedin.dart/biz-overview;optout=false;lang=en;tile=2;sz=300x250;s=0;v=6;u=jDh5sSdmpllmbkt1lndQdCt7;mod=950;title=ic;func=cre;func=edu;coid=744212;coid=2408664;ind=69;ind=80;csize=c;csize=d;occ=290;occ=294;occ=382;pocc=82;pocc=41;pocc=10;zip=20009;cntry=us;reg=97;sub=0;con=j;edu=19947;gy=2011;deg=400;dgcls=200;gdr=m;age=23;seg=773;seg=805;seg=546;seg=1039;seg=683;seg=535;seg=682;seg=1048;seg=748;seg=543;seg=9001;grp=122208;grp=49362;grp=3981403;grp=40456;grp=2229435;sjt=627;sjt=517;sjt=75;fos=100173;fos=100189;company=1273631;tile_p=2;adsuite=v2.2.5-min;sfadapter=t;ord=4824126317418

Within the request parameters, find the "company" param, and its value should be the numeric company id you need:

company=1273631

To verify it is the correct company id, tack it onto the end of a LinkedIn company page:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/1273631

Voila, it works!