by Search Copywriter
D. Warburton
D. Warburton
Google's search results will now replace URLs it deems as lacking context with a hierarchy displaying the location of the page relative to its parent website's structure.Google announced the new display today in a blog post, which outlines the Mountain View company's objective in making webpage context clearer for users arriving at a website through Google search fucntions.
When available on a site, breadcrumb trails are links that reflect the website hierarchy and provide users with information about the location of a webpage relative to the site as a whole, allowing them to backtrack if required. This is especially useful for users who may end up at a deep webpage through a search, as without a helpful sequence of links leading them back to the homepage, they can be confused about their position within the site.
By introducing the site hierarchies into search results, Google hopes to offer this missing contextual information before users even choose to visit the webpage.
This new feature will not be applied to all URLs, only those it believes to be lacking in context, or that are too short or too long to be of use. When a website structure is already clearly visible within the URL itself - for example "www.google.com / corporate / execs.html" - no additional context is required, and the URL will be displayed as normal.
However, in the case of searches results such as "www.productwiki.com / spidersapien," Google will replace the full URL with a site hierarchy, beginning with the host and domain of the site and offering users an instant visual guide to the location and category of the page within the website:
This provides easy access to the parent category for users who may be interested in similar products.
The Official Google Blog explains: "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.
"When we design the way results appear on google.com, our goal is to get you to the information you're looking for as quickly as possible. Sometimes that means improving how we represent websites, and other times that means giving you new ways to explore content. We're always happy when we can introduce a feature, like site hierarchies, that does both!"
