Better presentation of URLs in search results

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Well-structured URLs offer users a quick hint about the page topic and how the page fits within the website. To help mobile searchers understand your website better when we show it in the mobile search results, today we're updating the algorithms that display URLs in the search results to better reflect the names of websites, using the real-world name of the site instead of the domain name, and the URL structure of the sites in a breadcrumbs-like format.

Structured data site names and URLs

As part of this launch, we're also introducing support for schema.org structured data for websites to signal to our algorithms:

  • The website name to be used instead of the domain name
  • The URL structure of the URL as breadcrumbs

For more details and code examples, please see our structured data documentation for providing site names and breadcrumbs.

These changes are rolling out gradually and affect only mobile results. The site name change is US-only for now and breadcrumbs are rolling out worldwide.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please ask in the Webmaster Help Forum.