Definition
Also written: breadcrumbs
BreadcrumbList markup describes a page’s position in the site hierarchy as an ordered list. Google uses it to replace the raw URL in a result with a readable trail, which is one of the few rich results that still reliably renders.
Positions must run contiguously from 1, and each item needs a name and a resolvable URL.
The trail should match the site’s actual structure and its visible breadcrumb navigation, not an idealised keyword path.
The usual error
Where this goes wrong in practice
Emitting the markup without a visible breadcrumb on the page. The two are supposed to describe the same thing.
Related terms
Structured data
Structured data is machine-readable markup — usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary — that labels what a page’s content means: this is an article, this is its author, this is a service and its provider. Google confirms it is not a ranking factor; its documented job is enabling rich results and helping systems identify entities.
DefinitionCanonical URL
A canonical URL is the address a site nominates as the authoritative version of a page when several URLs serve equivalent content. It is declared with a rel="canonical" link element, and it is a strong hint to search engines rather than a directive they are obliged to follow.
DefinitionCrawl budget
Crawl budget is the number of URLs a search engine will fetch from a site in a given period, set by how much load the server can absorb and how much demand the engine has for the site’s content. It becomes a practical constraint mainly on large sites.
DefinitionE-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness — the framework Google’s human quality raters use to assess page and site quality. Google states it is not itself a ranking factor; it describes what the systems are being tuned to approximate, and it matters most on topics that affect money or wellbeing.
DefinitionFAQ schema
FAQ schema (schema.org FAQPage) marks up question-and-answer content so machines can read the pairs. It is still a valid schema type, but Google discontinued the FAQ rich result for nearly all sites starting in May 2026, with phased removal from Search Console tooling through that August.
DefinitionFeatured snippet
A featured snippet is a short extract Google promotes above the standard results to answer a query directly, drawn from a page already ranking for it. Formats include a paragraph, an ordered or unordered list, and a table, and the format Google chooses follows the shape of the query.
DefinitionGoogle Business Profile (GBP)
Google Business Profile is the free listing that makes a business eligible for the map pack and the knowledge panel in local results. It requires verification, and it requires either a physical address customers can visit or a declared service area for businesses that travel to customers.
Definitionhreflang
hreflang is an annotation that tells search engines which language and regional variant a page is intended for, so the right version is served to the right audience. Annotations must be reciprocal — every page in a set references every other, including itself.
Definition