http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation) Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail is a navigation aid used in user interfaces. It gives users a way to keep track of their locations within programs or documents. For SEO - at least gives links to the upper categories
Well theivo,thanks for the explanation,nice information!!! But i would like to have some more clear information about the same and if possible in detail too. Still thanks for your efforts.
Breadcrumb navigation is a navigational structure which shows the complete path in a web site where you visits the pages and where you are in the web site and from where you start to navigate which path you have followed to reach the final page. E.g.- You was starting navigate from Home Page then goes to services pages then navigate to About us and finally stop here at Contact Us page,so Breadcrumb shows the path like that. Home>Services>About Us>Contact Us .
Big sites have breadcrumb links to make it easy for the user to navigate to other pages on the site. It's not necessary for small sites/blogs.
"Follow the breadcrumbs!" Breadcrumb navigation is like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs along the forest floor as you walk deeper into the forest. You may not know where you are, but you can always follow the trail back to where you started. In website navigation, the "breadcrumbs" usually appear as a line of text which contains links to all the pages you have visited to get wherever you are. The LAST breadcrumb is usually the page where you are. On THIS page I see a short breadcrumb trail at upper left which says, "Home>Answer Question". This tells me that before I got here, I was on the "Home" page (being Yahoo Answers home page in this case). Just TWO crumbs: the one where I am now, and the one I came from to get here. I could click "Home" and go there. No need to click the backup arrow, Breadcrumb navigation is most useful to a user who has gone through a LOT of pages to get where they are. Suppose I was buying 1/4" steel pan head sheet metal screws from a big hardware web site. I may go through MANY pages to find the kind of screw I want. So the breadcrumbs might look like this: Home>hardware>screws, nuts and bolts> screws>sheet metal screws>steel>pan head Now let's say I also wanted some brass wood screws. I need only click the screws link in the breadcrumbs, then choose the path to the wood screws. No need to go back to the home page and start drilling down again. Breadcrumbs accomplish the same thing as nested drop down menus that remain open as you click through them, but they do so in less space, being just a line or two of links. However, they don't show you all the other possible pages you COULD have chosen, which the menus would.show you. The other key difference between breadcrumb and menu navigation is implementation for the web page designer. Generally, menus are easier to make since the menu choices stay the same on most every page. But the breadcrumbs must rely on some kind of programming, to track where every user has actually been.