Google replaces URLs with breadcrumb links in search results
Google has announced this morning that for certain queries they will be showing site hierarchies in the search results rather than URL’s string. On first inspection I don’t like the system because in all the examples Google has provided the keyword rich product URL is removed and replaced with a more generic category level keyword.
For example this nice URL “/spidersapien/” (in bold)
gets replaced with a less clickable “Toys & Games > Robots”
On the plus side the categories in the hierarchy are links through to the category pages on the site but this isn’t clear when you look at them which could lead to confusion.
Here is how the links are generated:
The information in these new hierarchies come from analyzing destination web pages. For example, if you visit the ProductWiki Spidersapien page, you’ll see a series of similar links at the top, “Home> Toys & Games> Robots.” These are standard navigational tools used throughout the web called “breadcrumbs,” which webmasters frequently show on their sites to help users navigate. By analyzing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.
What do you think? Will this hurt click through rates?
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 16 comments below, or add your own!
thank you for you information, i must be careful with that now.
This is an interesting development in Google’s search results, and I can understand why they have done it, however I also immediately think that it could cause confusion for the end user.
Another more important factor is will this affect the SEO of pages in general? Will the fact that Google is not displaying the keyword rich URL mean that a new method of optimisation will now be required within the breadcrumb?
I will be interested to see the reaction of webmasters, and what impact this will have in the long run, both to SEO and end users searching Google.
I wonder how they are dealing with the differences in architecture on individual sites. On a WordPress blog for example, you will have category pages, but by default these are placed inside a “category” level which doesn’t have any content, meaning or value. It would look pretty nasty to see this in the breadcrumb.
They are also inferring that you want to highlight the inner workings of your site for that particular search result which may not be the case. Consider the case of a landing page – where you are trying to send people to a focused destination without distraction. Here you are enabling the visitor to move off course which could effect conversions.
I like that it provides more choice for people, but it does seem to make a lot of assumptions.
Usability wise, if they changed the > color to gray (rather than green), so that it looks more like a classic breadcrumb with non-click-able separators and links it would help the understanding that you can access multiple sections of the site via this string.
Interesting for sure.
I don’t think this will affect click through rates at all personally, the only real effect of this is the use of SEO friendly URLs and the keywords – whether it be legit or spam.
I would suspect that’s the real reason why Google have done this – if the page being returned is relevant then I see no reason to offer a breadcrumb which would take the user away from the page they’re looking for.
This development seems to confirm the idea that more users are not visiting sites through the homepage any more. It appears that Google are trying to help users find their way around once they have dived into a deep section of the site. I think this could be good for users but have no idea how it might effect businesses.
Misleading to say the least, I wonder if Google would offer an option for the webmasters to opt out of this way of displaying their sites in the SERPs?
@IrishWonder – aye, definitely think that should be how this should be implemented, you have control to an extent over sitelinks appearing in your results so really they should offer the option here. I’m not against them as such, I just don’t really see the point.
Yeah, even i amazed with the search results that Google is now giving more importance to breadcrumb rather than keyword rich url, let’s see what happens next…!!
I don’t think it will cause too much confusion and may have a positive effect, because if your title tag is correct it gives a targetted entry to your site, as well as the category section too.
What will be interesting to see is which results this gets applied too. Looks like they are trailling with product results, but the other logical results would be for sites where they had created Sitelinks.
I can’t see service based businesses needing to worry too much at the moment, however product based businesses probably need to make sure their product pages are correctly optimised.
Hmmm, very upseting news. I mean for the users this could be beneficial, but for SEO this can be tricky. Is this the part of all that Caffeine buzz, or is it separate upgrade?
I’ve just achieved some SEO succes with my ebooks blog and now all these changes lol.
Another issue that occured to me, from an analytics point of view – if a user seaerches for a particular product by name, but entered one or two levels up in the hirearchy from the results page, you would start to see landing pages with keywords associated that they are not optimised for – could cause confusion to some degree particulary depending how the user behaviour on the site might change if they go in a few levels up.
I thought breadcrumbs were a dying entity – so this feels like a backwards step to me!
Just wehn you learn and build around certain SEO techniques that Google likes, they go and change things and leave people hanging with what and how to implement new techiniques..
i Like that
I agree it is a useful trend for sites that are well designed and properly demarcated, but may be a problem for older sites. Hmmm, maybe that is why Google is doing it? I have an older online business site that has pretty long urls. is that a problem?
Great insights. I must be able to optimize fully my headlines for that reason. I think this would affect the url’s that are already existing. Does it really replaces the existing url’s? Or just the submission upon the commencement of this Google apps.
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November 18, 2009 at 3:30pm