What Are Breadcrumbs in SEO in 2025?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is always evolving — what worked yesterday might need tweaking today. One concept that has been part of the SEO toolkit for many years is breadcrumbs navigation, also known as simply “breadcrumbs.” As of 2025, the role of breadcrumbs is shifting. In this post, we’ll explore what breadcrumbs are, how Google and users treat them now, how they affect SEO, and what you should do if you want to stay ahead. This is brought to you by Relizon Ai.

What Are Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs are navigational aids that show visitors where they are in a website’s hierarchy. They typically appear near the top of a page and look something like this:

Home > Blog > SEO > What Are Breadcrumbs

Each item in the chain (except the current page) is a link, letting users move up levels. Breadcrumbs help users understand site structure, avoid getting lost, and move more easily to related pages. They also help search engines understand how your content is organized.

Why Breadcrumbs Have Been Important for SEO

Historically, breadcrumbs have had several key benefits:

1. Improved UX (User Experience): Users can see at a glance where they are, navigate back to parent categories, or explore sibling pages. This tends to lower bounce rates and increase page views.

2. Better Crawlability / Site Structure Clarity: Breadcrumbs signal to search engines the hierarchical structure of the content. They help Google understand relationships between pages.

3. Rich Snippets in Search Results: When implemented with schema / structured data (BreadcrumbList etc.), breadcrumb trails sometimes show up in search engine result pages (SERPs), helping users understand context before clicking. These enhanced results tend to get better click‑through rates.

What’s Changed in 2025: The Big Updates

While breadcrumbs are still conceptually valuable, there are some recent shifts from Google and the SEO community that change how we should think about them in 2025.

• Removal from Mobile Search Results: As of January 2025, Google made a major change: on mobile SERPs, Google no longer displays breadcrumb paths in search results. Instead, only the domain name is shown for mobile search listings.

• Breadcrumbs remain on desktop SERPs: On desktop, Google still shows the breadcrumb trail. So for desktop users, that extra hierarchy in the search result is preserved.

• Structured data still supported: Despite the removal of visible breadcrumbs in mobile search results, structured data markup (like BreadcrumbList schema) still matters. Google still takes schema into account for understanding site structure, for desktop SERPs, and for internal crawling/indexing.

So, while the visible influence of breadcrumbs in mobile SERPs has changed, their underlying importance remains for site organization, internal navigation, and desktop search appearance.

Why These Changes Matter for SEO Strategy

Given these shifts, here are the implications of what’s happening with breadcrumbs in 2025:

1. Click‑Through Rates (CTR) on Mobile Listings May Be Affected
   Before, users could see “Home > Category > Subcategory…” in the search result, giving more context about what the page is. That helped them decide whether the result likely matched their intent. With breadcrumbs removed in mobile SERPs, users have less context at a glance, which could reduce CTR especially for deep pages.

2. Greater Pressure on Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Snippets
   Since breadcrumb trails are no longer visible on mobile SERPs, titles and meta descriptions must carry more weight. They need to clearly express site hierarchy, topic relevance, and content value, because the user can’t rely on a breadcrumb path to give them hints.

3. Importance of Internal Site Navigation / UX
   Users who arrive directly at a deep page (through some other link) will still benefit if your site shows breadcrumbs on the page itself, not just in SERPs. Having good breadcrumb navigation on your site (for both desktop and mobile display) helps users orient themselves and explore your site more fully. This helps reduce bounce, increase time on site, encourage exploration, etc.

4. Structured Data / Schema Remains Valuable
   Even if breadcrumbs aren’t visible on mobile search results, schema markup helps search engines understand your site structure. It can still support desktop SERPs and internal organizational signals. Also, structured data in general is becoming more and more important for rich results, featured snippets, etc.

5. Potential Need to Rethink URL Structure
   With fewer cues from search results like breadcrumbs, having clean, logical URLs, and well‑organized categories becomes more important. Also, making sure your breadcrumbs on the site match your URL structure so there is consistency helps both users and SEO.
   

Best Practices for Breadcrumbs in 2025

If you’re managing a site and want to make sure your breadcrumbs are optimized for current SEO realities, here are best practices to follow:

• Use Hierarchy‑Based Breadcrumbs where possible. These are simple: Home > Parent Category > Child Category > Page. They are generally the most intuitive for users.

• Ensure breadcrumbs are visible on your site page (both desktop and mobile) in a clean, usable location (usually under or near the header). Even if they’re not shown in mobile search results, site UX benefits from having them.

• Implement breadcrumb schema markup (BreadcrumbList) correctly. Use JSON‑LD or other recommended formats, following Google’s guidelines. Validate via tools such as Google’s Rich Results Test. Align URL paths and breadcrumb paths. If your URLs reflect categories and subcategories, make sure your breadcrumbs mirror that. Consistency helps both users and search crawlers.

• Keep breadcrumbs simple. Avoid overly long trails, avoid linking to the current page, and avoid weird attribute‑based or history‑based breadcrumbs unless they make sense for your site.

• Monitor performance metrics: after any change, track CTR, bounce rate, time on page, and organic search impressions. See whether users are engaging as expected. Tools like Google Search Console are your friends.

How This Ties Into Other SEO Concepts

At Relizon Ai, we believe SEO is interconnected. Breadcrumbs are not just a standalone feature; they work in concert with other on‑page and site structure elements. For example:

• Schema markup more broadly: Just as breadcrumbs benefit from structured data, so do many other aspects of the site. If you haven’t already read our guide on What is Schema Markup: A Relizon Ai Guide, it’s a good resource for understanding how structured data helps various SEO components.

• Organic search impressions & tracking: If you track organic impressions and how users find and interact with your site (see our blog Organic Search Impressions: How to Track & Improve), you’ll see the impact of breadcrumb changes in things like CTR, impression position, and user behavior.

Breadcrumbs, schema markup, site structure, page navigability, and content hierarchy — they all influence organic search performance together.

What to Do Going Forward: Actionable Steps for 2025

To adapt your SEO strategy for breadcrumbs in 2025, here are concrete actions:

1. Audit your breadcrumb implementation.
   Check if every page that would benefit has visible breadcrumbs. Confirm that schema‐markup is correct, error‑free. If you use a CMS or plugins (WordPress, etc.), ensure the settings are correct.

2. Optimize title tags & meta descriptions.
   Since mobile SERPs no longer show breadcrumbs, ensure your titles/meta descriptions communicate context (e.g. category, subcategory) clearly. Make sure they match or complement your site’s hierarchy.

3. Ensure URL structure is logical and clean.
   If URLs are messy or don’t reflect the navigation hierarchy, clean them up. Categories → subcategories → page structure helps.

4. Improve site internal navigation.
   If a user is deep in your site, they should still be able to move up or across easily. Breadcrumbs on site pages, menus, internal links, and relevant links in body content.

5. Measure and iterate.
   Use tools like Google Search Console, analytics to track changes in CTR, bounce rates, organic search impressions. Compare performance before & after you make changes.

6. Stay updated.
   As with all SEO, Google’s algorithms and display rules shift. Make sure you stay aware of changes like how SERPs show URLs, breadcrumbs, rich results, etc.

Conclusion

In 2025, breadcrumbs in SEO are still relevant — but their visible role in mobile search results has diminished. Google no longer shows breadcrumb trails in mobile SERPs (just the domain), though desktop results still display them. However, their value remains in site navigation, user experience, structured data, URL logic, and helping with user engagement metrics like bounce rate, page views, and internal linking.

At Relizon Ai, we see breadcrumbs as one piece of a larger SEO puzzle. They tie into schema markup, organic impressions, site structure, and content relevancy. Optimizing breadcrumbs (both visible ones on your site, and behind‑the‑scenes via schema) is still a smart move.

If you haven’t already, consider reading our posts on What is Schema Markup and Organic Search Impressions & How to Track & Improve to build a holistic SEO strategy. Breadcrumbs alone won’t do everything — but done right, they’re a powerful support in making your site more navigable, trustworthy, and SEO‑friendly.