Those with an eye for detail may have noticed a change that Google has rolled out this week on its search result pages. Google are replacing some of the green URLs (a URL is the web address) of search results with something new: hierarchical links.

There are a few problems with showing URLs in search results. When a bit of thought has been put into how a site's URLs should be formatted, they can be descriptive and helpful to the seacher. But often they are too long to display fully, or too cryptic to provide any extra information about that search result.

Google's plan is to diplay hierarchical links, an idea which they have adopted from breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are often displayed on websites to show the user where they are within the website. An example from a business that sells Gizmos would look like this:

Home > Products > Networking > Gizmo

Through breadcrumbs, a website is able to clearly articulate where the user is within the site. And it gives them an easy way to navigate back up the tree.

Before

After

By using this breadcrumbing technique Google are hoping to make it more clear where the resulting page is within that site. Google often roll out tweaks to their services, and we shall see what effect this has on our user experience.