Breadcrumbs Are a Website Navigation Aid
About 1 min read
Breadcrumbs are a small row of links that shows where the current page sits within a website’s structure — for example, Home › Subject › Page. They help visitors understand their location and move back up to higher-level pages. The name comes from the trail of crumbs in the Hansel and Gretel story.
Questions you may have include:
- What are breadcrumbs?
- Why use them?
- What types are there?
What breadcrumbs do
A breadcrumb trail appears near the top of a page and lists the path from the home page down to the current page, with each step (except the current one) a clickable link. It gives visitors a quick sense of where they are and an easy way to step back up the hierarchy.
Why they help
Breadcrumbs improve usability by orienting visitors, especially on large sites, and by making it simple to move to a parent section without using the back button repeatedly. This can keep visitors on the site longer and reduce the chance they leave in confusion.
Types of breadcrumbs
- Hierarchy-based — show the page’s place in the site structure (the most common type).
- Attribute-based — show the characteristics of an item, common on shopping sites.
- History-based — show the path the visitor took to arrive.
Search benefit
Breadcrumbs also help search engines understand a site’s structure, and search results can display the breadcrumb path. Adding the matching structured data helps search engines show it correctly.
Summary
Breadcrumbs are a row of links showing a page’s place in the site hierarchy. They orient visitors and make it easy to navigate upward, improving usability on larger sites, and — especially the hierarchy-based type — they also help search engines understand and display site structure.