Breadcrumb structured data

What it does

“A breadcrumb trail on a page indicates the page’s position in the site hierarchy, and it may help users understand and explore a site effectively.” Google uses breadcrumb markup to categorize the page’s information in search results.

Officially documented · Google Search Central

Google says: “This feature is available on desktop in all regions and languages where Google Search is available.”

Officially documented · Google Search Central

Required properties

“To specify breadcrumbs, define a BreadcrumbList that contains at least two ListItems.” Each ListItem needs position, name and item. Position 1 is the beginning of the trail, and item is the URL of the page the crumb represents. The last crumb in the trail does not need item; without it, Google uses the URL of the containing page.

Officially documented · Google Search Central

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement": [
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Books", "item": "https://example.com/books" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Science Fiction", "item": "https://example.com/books/sciencefiction" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Award Winners" }
  ]
}

Which trail to mark up

“We recommend providing breadcrumbs that represent a typical user path to a page, instead of mirroring the URL structure. It is not required to include a breadcrumb ListItem for the top level path (your site’s domain or host name), nor for the page itself.”

Officially documented · Google Search Central

A page reachable by more than one path can carry more than one trail. Google’s documentation shows an example with two.

What breadcrumbs don’t do

• They are not an AI search requirement: Google says no special markup is needed for its AI features (Structured data and AI search).
• Markup that breaks Google’s structured data guidelines can lead to a manual action, like any other type.

This site

Every indexable entry here carries a BreadcrumbList from the home page through the topic hub to the entry. It follows the same grouping the sidebar shows.