On the 18th of November Google announced that they will be replacing search engine result pages URLs with link that show site hierarchies, for some results. While this is a small change it is defiantly one that is worth noting.

Google has said that they will be considering sites that use breadcrumb navigation to help users navigate their sites, but currently only a small percentage of sites have been updated. Google plan to extend this in the future to update a larger number of websites.

While this change may result in a loss of potential for having a keyword in URL on the search results page, it does mean that a single result in Google can link too many different pages on your site. As each hierarchical level of the breadcrumb links to that section of your website.  In the example bellow you will see that the link from Google links to the page ranking for the search string, the ‘Robots’ section, the ‘Toys & Games’ section as well as productwiki.com’s home page.

For example URL 'productwiki.com/spidersapien'


gets replaced with '“Toys & Games > Robots'



Jon Jauncey

SEO Birmingham