Breadcrumb Checker
Check the breadcrumb trail a search result will show, and whether the markup matches the page.
About this tool
Reads a page's BreadcrumbList markup, shows the trail in order, and checks the things that go wrong.
Breadcrumbs earn their place because Google shows the trail **instead of the URL** in a result. A wrong trail is wrong where everybody can see it, and the ways it goes wrong are consistent:
**Positions starting at zero.** The specification numbers them from one. A zero-based list is often ignored entirely, and nothing warns you.
**A last item that links elsewhere.** The final crumb is the current page. When it points somewhere else, the trail describes a position the page is not in.
**Visible breadcrumbs with no markup.** The commonest case by far: the navigation is right there on the page, and because there is no BreadcrumbList behind it the search result falls back to showing the raw URL.
Common questions
Do breadcrumbs help rankings?
Not directly. They change the result itself: Google displays the trail in place of the URL, which reads better and tells someone where the page sits before they click. That is a click-through effect, not a ranking one.
Do I need visible breadcrumbs as well as the markup?
Yes. Google's guidelines require structured data to describe content visible on the page. Markup for a trail nobody can see is exactly what the guidelines exclude, and it is a risk for no gain.
Should the last item have a URL?
It is optional, and if you include one it must be the current page. A final crumb pointing anywhere else describes a position the page does not occupy.
Can a page have more than one trail?
Yes, where a page genuinely sits in several places — a product in two categories. Google picks one. More often two trails means two plugins each emitting their own, which is worth fixing.