Google cleans up URLs in mobile search results with breadcrumbs

Google is revamping the way URLs appear in search results on mobile devices. Smaller screens have a tendency to truncate lengthier URLs, and even when this doesn’t happen diminutive screen size can make addresses difficult to read.

To combat this problem, the search giant is introducing a new breadcrumb trail presentation with a view to making the information easy to absorb at a glance. But what does this change actually mean?

What may previously have been displayed as the undeniably unwieldy http://www.google.com/about/company/history is reduced to the far more digestible Google > about > company > history. The move comes as a result of adding support for schema.org structured data as this allows for the easy display of a site name rather than the domain name. It also takes care of the URL conversion process into the more easily readable.

Introducing the change, Google says:

Today we’re updating the algorithms that display URLs in the search results to better reflect the names of websites, using the real-world name of the site instead of the domain name, and the URL structure of the sites in a breadcrumbs-like format.

The company has updated its help pages for developers looking to correctly implement breadcrumb formatting and the site name feature. Breadcrumbing is now rolling out globally, while site name support is limited to the US for now.

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