I spotted an interesting post from iCrossing via their Twitter account today. It’s about some rumours that are flying round the web on the topic of Google adding a breadcrumb trail beneath each search results on the SERPs. A grand idea and one that should help to give users an insight into the structure of your website before they even visit it (it’d be even better if each stage of the breadcrumb was clickable), however some site owners may not be so pleased.
How pleased they would be would depend on exactly how Google implemented something like this. If they can work out your site structure via the main sections, or via the page title (which would seem to be how the example on iCrossings blog shows it) then it will be a good thing for most site owners. But if they worked it out from directory structure (for example) that would cause a whole world of pain for site owners everywhere.
I think it’s most likely that this will be like Site Links (the links to main sections of a site that only appear under the ‘chosen few’ results that deserve it) and won’t be applied to all websites on the result pages. It does show the power of Google though as changes like this will always hurt somebody who has a legacy or large site and can’t afford to change it to optimise it for the new SERPs. A good reminder of why pragmatic design is so important when building a site, particularly when thinking about the structure and how that may work as your website grows over time (don’t forget your content plan)!
