Many of you will have already noticed the latest enhancement to Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS) where a breadcrumb, or “clickable” hierarchy of the website, is displayed, replacing the traditional listing URL. Search listings will be replaced with the new Google breadcrumb trails when Google feels a website’s current URL structure lacks context.

Industry thinking is that not only will the Google breadcrumb trails enhance the user experience but they will provide an increase in click through rates for site owners, as users will be given more information about their search query which may in turn influence where they click.

For example, traditional URLs appear as “/selling-your-bike-on-ebay/” where keywords entered by the users search query are bolded (as shown below).

The new Google breadcrumb feature will replace traditional URLs with “> Buy > Cars, Bikes, Boats > Trailers >” providing direct links to parent pages or sections, further increasing the number of entry points to a website (as shown below).

Google announced the new “user enhanced” display on 18 November 2009 in a blog post, which outlines the objective in providing clearer navigational options for users arriving at a website via Google search.

When Google decides the breadcrumb feature will enhance the users’ experience, clickable trail links that reflect the website hierarchy will appear. The new feature provides users with information about the physical location of a webpage relative to the site as a whole, allowing them to backtrack if required.

The Google Blog states: “By analysing site breadcrumbs, we’ve been able to improve the search snippet for a small percentage of search results, and we hope to expand in the future.”

What do you think? Will the new Google breadcrumb feature help click through rates?

One of the most significant changes to Google’s algorithms this year saw the introduction of “Rich Snippets” to the search engines results pages (SERPs). Launched on August the 19^th 2009, the new changes provided us with enriched search listings similar to the following image:

A snapshot of Googles new rich search results

However Google has recently started showing “Jump to” links placed within SERP results (shown below) or see it for yourself when searching for “what is LVR?” in Google.

A snapshot of Googles new "Jump To" links

The links themselves are actually named anchor links, which are designed for webmasters to point users to parts of a web page that may otherwise take long period of time to scroll to. They are known as “Jump to” links and will only be displayed provided the text within the named anchor is applicable to the users search query. If the no applicable named anchor is available to Google then standard meta description or the search engine description will be displayed.

Google recently posted about “jump to” named anchor links on their webmaster central blog, here is what they had to say bout them:

“We generate these deep links completely algorithmically, based on page structure, so they could be displayed for any site (and of course money isn’t involved in any way, so you can’t pay to get these links). There are a few things you can do to increase the chances that they might appear on your pages. First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1″), and that your page includes a “table of contents” which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

Posted by Raj Krishnan, Snippets Team”

So, although “Jump to” links may not have any direct advantage for SEO, they will improve click through rates on search engine results pages and in turn the usability of a web page. This is a prime example of Google acknowledging websites that have taken usability into account when producing lengthy content. When using named anchors ensure you take into consideration the user and the type of query string they will be searching for when looking information based on your content.