About 2 weeks ago, a piece of noteworthy news came out of Google regarding a change to the presentation of some of the results that are returned in its pages. This is in addition to the much anticipated Caffeine update (which is also beginning to show itself and will be the subject of another post a little bit later this week). The announcement stated that Google would begin testing the presentation of breadcrumb navigation in its SERPS (search engine results pages) in place of the traditional URL structure that we are all used to seeing. A result here and there seemed to show after the announcement, but I am now seeing this with enough frequency that it merits a discussion (or at least a mention). Lets head out on to the web and take a look:
Lets consider the search for, oh I don’t know, Jimmy Buffett CD.
You will notice that the first two results (at least at the time I am writing this!) are from CD Universe and have a traditional URL structure underneath them in blue. Now, look at the three and four results that currently belong to Amazon. Can you see the difference in the URL? To those of you that use this type of navigation on your sites, this will make perfect sense. What does this mean as far as rankings are concerned? Well, as always Google is trying to present searchers with the most relevant set of results possible, and they also fell like this presentation will be easier and more user friendly for searchers.
This is a pretty significant change that we are seeing. Folks, if your site has lots of pages and/or products and services……LISTEN UP!!! The state of your internal linking structure and site navigation just got a whole lot more important in the eyes of Google!
Please pay extra close attention to this, and as always, if you think your site needs help and would like to get it done correctly the first time, send me an email at chris@pagonewebsolutions.com to set up a free consultation…..
