Adding breadcrumb structured data to Shopify

Did you know though that there are two different kinds of breadcrumbs?

There are the breadcrumbs visually on product and blog pages. These tell the visitor where they are in relation to the site. Product breadcrumbs may show the home and product page, or the home, collection name, and product name. Either option works.

But did you know that you can also qualify for Breadcrumb Rich Results?

Breadcrumb structured data should be included and maintained by your theme. This ensures the breadcrumbs match exactly how your theme codes your URLs.

Adding breadcrumb structured data should be coded with caution. Using the wrong URL structure can hurt your SEO if they aren't done in the exact same way as your theme coded the URLs.

For that reason, JSON-LD for SEO does not include breadcrumb data automatically.

You have the option to turn on breadcrumb structured data for blogs and products (with and without collection) based on your theme configurations.

With recent changes in Google, the benefits of breadcrumb structured data are diminished. Google's algorithm is able to figure things out from the URLs. Visually those automatic results look nearly identical to actual Breadcrumb Rich Results.

Using the example above, there are two results that both show breadcrumbs in the search result.

The first result is Google's automatic breadcrumb data which is pulled from the URL of the page. Notice that it's all lower case and you can see the dashes between the product name as you would in a URL.

The second result is a Breadcrumb Rich Result which comes from the structured data. Notice the title case structure.

What Google shows in the search results is entirely up to their algorithm. We can provide as much information as possible in the structured data, but it's ultimately up to them what data is displayed visually.

Looking at these two results, though you can see a difference, it's not incredibly obvious to the naked eye.

If you want to include breadcrumb structured data with JSON-LD for SEO, you can do so in the product settings of the app. Use this article for the full details on setting up breadcrumbs with JSON-LD for SEO.