Google have announced that they are rolling out another change to the way they display their search results by getting rid of the green URL under the search result and adding a “hierarchy” for some search results. The change is aimed at improving the relevancy and understanding of a site by showing the user how a specific page fits into a given sites hierarchy. The new hierarchy feature - which will roll out in the next few days - is seen as a vast improvement to the current structure where landing page URLs can be “too obscure” and therefore lack the necessary information for the user.
Google give the following example which highlights how the changes work:
As you can see the result above is how search results are currently displayed for the ProductWiki query.
Now the hierarchy shows your sites breadcrumb navigation and therefore displays a lot more information about the page to the user before they click on the result.
To add to this each of the phrases in the breadcrumb trail is a link which aims to help the user to navigate to a more general category of the site in the search result if they so choose.
As you would most likely assume Google are taking this information from the breadcrumb navigation of your site. What this means is that now more then ever is the time to make sure you structure your site well and that the appropriate content is placed in your sites breadcrumb navigation. So pay attention to the keywords being targeted for the given pages and reflect this in the breadcrumb navigation of your site. This is already one of the basic fundamentals of SEO, however with this new addition the importance of the breadcrumb navigation would appear to have gone up a notch.