BreadcrumbList

A BreadcrumbListBreadcrumbList is a schema type that describes a page's breadcrumb navigation in a structured way, making its position within the site hierarchy machine-readable.Open glossary entry → marks up a page's navigation path, that is, the sequence from the home page through categories down to the current page. It makes a URL's position within the site structure machine-readable.

This markup is typical on:

• blog posts,
• category and sub-pages,
• product pages.

In search it can produce a breadcrumbBreadcrumb navigation shows a page's path within the website hierarchy. It improves user orientation and complements internal linking.Open glossary entry → display in the result and makes the navigation structure clearer. If breadcrumbs are visible but not marked up as a BreadcrumbList, this structured information is missing.

The marked-up breadcrumb should match the visible path. Its priority is usually medium: BreadcrumbList complements core types such as Article, Product or Organization rather than replacing them.

How the markup is built #

A BreadcrumbList is an ordered array of ListItem entries, each with position, name and item (the URL). The list mirrors the visible breadcrumb exactly, from the homepage down to the parent of the current page. Most CMSA content management system (CMS) is software for creating, managing and publishing web content, usually without programming knowledge. Well-known examples are WordPress or Shopify.Open glossary entry → and SEOSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) covers all measures that help a website become more visible in unpaid (organic) search results.Open glossary entry → plugins generate it automatically once breadcrumbs exist in the template.

What it does in practice #

With valid BreadcrumbList markup, Google can replace the URL line of a search result with the readable path ("rankscan.ai › Blog › Technical SEO"). That clarifies context before the click and reinforces the site structure signals crawlers derive from internal linksInternal linking refers to links that connect pages within the same website. They control how search engines and users find and thematically classify content.Open glossary entry →.