Web & SEO
What is breadcrumb navigation?
Breadcrumb navigation is a row of links showing a page's position in the site hierarchy, letting a visitor step back up to any level above it.
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Technical definition
A breadcrumb trail appears near the top of a page as a sequence such as Home, Services, Bathroom Installation, with each entry but the last linking to its level. It reflects the site's hierarchy, not the visitor's browsing history.
Marking breadcrumbs up with BreadcrumbList structured data lets Google display the trail in place of the raw URL in search results, which makes the result easier to read. Breadcrumbs also add internal links from deep pages back to their parents, which helps distribute authority through the site.
In plain terms
The small trail of links near the top that says where you are: Home, then the section, then this page.
Click any of them to move back up a level. It is the site telling you where you have ended up.
Why it matters
Breadcrumbs earn their place on sites with real depth. An online store with categories and subcategories, a services business with grouped offerings, a site with a large help section. Visitors arrive on deep pages from search, with no idea what sits above them, and breadcrumbs give them a way up that is not the back button.
On a small flat site with five pages, they add clutter and nothing else. The test is whether your pages nest. If everything is one level below the homepage, skip them. If your structure has genuine levels, add breadcrumbs and mark them up, because the structured data alone improves how your results read in search.
