Google has added another new structured data report, allowing site owners to quickly check whether breadcrumb markup has been implemented correctly.
The ‘Breadcrumbs’ report appears under the Enhancements section in Search Console along with other reports related to the implementation of structured data.
Just like other structured data reports, this one shows users which sets of breadcrumb structured data have been implemented correctly, which ones have not, and which ones have warnings.
If Search Console detects errors with breadcrumb markup implementation then it will identity what’s missing from the markup so you can fix the problem quickly and efficiently.
Importance of Breadcrumbs
Why is it important to have valid breadcrumb structured data markup?
Google Search uses breadcrumb markup in the body of a web page to categorize the information from the page in search results.
Given the fact that Google is displaying breadcrumbs more prominently in search results, it’s more important than ever to make sure the markup is valid.
Where Google would previously show full URLs in search snippets it is now showing breadcrumbs instead. Google relies on valid markup in order to generate the breadcrumbs seen in search results.
So invalid markup could result in a page’s breadcrumb information not being displayed correctly in search results.
Invalid markup won’t hurt rankings, but it’s good practice to provide Google with as much accurate information about a page as possible.
Breadcrumb markup can be implemented using JSON-LD, RDFa, or Microdata. It can also be implemented as part of a page’s visual design using HTML.
