Google Made Breadcrumbs Unclickable in Search Results
Google have made the breadcrumbs in search results unclickable, turning them in to plain texts and Bing stopped showing breadcrumbs in SERP.
Google silently have made the breadcrumbs in search results unclickable, turning them in to plain texts. Also Bing is not show breadcrumbs at all in its search results. There were no official announcements made from the search engine giants.
By using breadcrumbs; you could gain more links in the search results along with the content’s link. The breadcrumb links are show below the main content’s title and URL in SERP (Search Engine Result Page) providing a great source organic search results. But this move from the search engines like Google and Bing has changes it.
If you have added breadcrumbs with proper markup following Google webmaster and/or Bing webmaster guidelines (both are same), then subsequently the breadcrumbs with links would show on the search results. Your breadcrumbs should have proper markup sing microdata, microformats, or RDFa and be well structured in order to appear in search engines. Also it can be set using Google webmaster’s Data Highlighter tool.
But as the search engines are ignoring it one way another and now you have to reconsider adding and using breadcrumbs.
Check Your Website’s Breadcrumbs in action in Google and Bing
To check you website’s breadcrumbs in the SERP, type site: then paste your website’s URL and search it in Google and Bing. It will be like this site:youromain.com, site:ebay.com.
If you added breadcrumbs in your website with proper markup; in Google you will find that the breadcrumbs links are not showing however the texts are visible. In Bing you will not find any sign of it.
Breadcrumbs are Gone from Google and Bing
Not particularly gone from Google as it made breadcrumbs unclickable; and definitely gone from Bing.
As I have been using breadcrumbs in my blog, I have checked this in several browsers, mobile devices, removing cache and cookies, even re-installing browsers. Also talked other bloggers and webmasters about this too.
Yes people this is happening.
Should You Continue Using Breadcrumbs in Your Website
Breadcrumbs for e-commerce sites are must. Also many other types of websites and blogs use breadcrumbs as they allow visitors to understand the website’s structure and his/her current position in it. Using proper markups the Google webmaster’s Data Highlighter, the breadcrumbs also shown in the SERP.
But as currently Google made the unclickable turning them just mere text and Bing not showing at all, you have to rethink the use of Breadcrumbs.
More precisely Breadcrumbs with markups and/or set breadcrumbs with Google webmaster’s Data Highlighter tool.
You should keep Breadcrumbs in you website but may want to remove the markups for it from your website’s HTML.
Removing the markup means instead of the breadcrumbs the URL/ permalink of the content will be shown in the SERP, which is better in any sense then unclickable breadcrumbs in Google search results.
Remove breadcrumbs from SERP is a big task for large websites; especially e-commerce sites. However decision to remove it, should not be based on the fact that Google have made them unclickable.
Rather, webmasters should make this decision based on the types of you website’s content, trend of your website’s organic visits and other analytics data.
My suggestion will be to remove breadcrumbs from SERP unless your website is an e-commerce one.
I used breadcrumbs in this website but after finding out I recently removed the markups from it.
As mentioned; there is no official announcement for removing breadcrumbs from Google and Bing. Also there is no telling if and when they will renable it again. Considering the experience of Google Authorship markup’s demise, this feature also may be gone forever.
