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Google continues to make the most of its position as the most popular search engine by adding new facilities. Some of these are more of a hindrance than a help. One that is beginning to appear is called breadcrumbs, but the current opinion of a href=http://www.kalmindonsearchengineplacement.co.uk/affordablesearchengineoptimization.asp target=’_blank’search engine optimisation/a commentators is decidedly mixed. brbrBreadcrumbs itself is not a Google invention. The thinking behind breadcrumbs is based on the classic fairy tale process of laying a trail of breadcrumbs when going into the woods as a way of quickly retracing your steps. The same idea can be used on websites. As a user traverses the hierarchical structure of a website, a trail of levels is displayed somewhere on the page that shows his route and allows him to work back up the hierarchy simply without having to only use the back button, with clickable anchor text for each named step (crumb) on the trail. What is new is that Google has decided to show breadcrumb paths on the search engine results listing, following the description snippet. So how does this affect the a href=http://www.kalmindonsearchengineplacement.co.uk/ target=’_blank’search optimization/a of your organisationrsquo;s website?brbrFor a small organisation, breadcrumbs should not be a worry. It is unlikely that the website is going to have so many pages that needing to add programming to the pages to leave a trail is necessary. Conventional search optimization processes to improve the a href=http://www.kalmindonsearchengineplacement.co.uk/seoconsultants.asp target=’_blank’search engine positioning/a will still be a benefit, working to improve awareness and making the website more noticeable on results listings.brbrThe next feeling has to be that breadcrumbs should have no impact on the organic search engine positioning. This is just a different line on the data supplied resulting from a search request. Google will supply the breadcrumb trail as it would appear on the chosen page if available instead of the URL of the specific page as it would if no breadcrumb trail is available.brbrFor a search engine optimisation consultant, the appearance of the breadcrumb trail is a mixed blessing. True, it is the addition of another user-friendly navigation process. search optimization processes could be applied to the breadcrumb names to include keywords, but this could lead to saturation ndash; a case where usability should take precedence over optimization. brbrShowing the breadcrumb trail means we have lost the URL of the page that the search request. For many users, this is not a worry, as they are confused by URLs and so make a fresh search even to find sites they use often. Also, providing the trail allows the user to enter a different page to that expected by the search result, so all the work to obtain a good search engine positioning for that page is unwanted. brbrAn additional concern is that Google apparently does not always display the breadcrumb trail if it could, but that may be down to settings on the pages of the given website that stops Google from extracting the path. brbrBreadcrumb trails are a useful addition to larger websites, but may be less so on a search listing. Google may be alone in providing breadcrumbs: the rival search engines may decide not to supply a similar facility. This should not have any bearing on the need to apply search engine optimisation processes to your organisationrsquo;s website.br

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