I want to draw your attention to a very subtle-change in Google SERPs: breadcrumbs.

Google has been indirectly advocating their use for quite a while now because they provide a better user experience, and an easy navigational path for their bots.

I have been urging clients to use them for several years because they provide an easy way to add keyword-rich backlinks to every page on your site, no matter how deep a given page is within a site. They also help to establish a hierarchy of content, which really helps to get search visitors to the right page from the right search.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Google has decided that breadcrumbs are so important, that they may begin using them in their regular Search Results. Certainly, this is a more human-friendly method of communicating hierarchy than filepaths.

But what effect does it have on Click-through? It remains to be seen. However, if you haven’t drunk the Kool-aid of using breadcrumbs on your website, I would suggest that now might be a good time to experiment.

Tags: backlinks, breadcrumbs, google, google serps, kool aid, subtle change, user experience

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Organic Placement (SEO), Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.