Google Removes URL Breadcrumbs from Mobile Search Results

Google will remove URL breadcrumbs from mobile search results globally, displaying only domain names instead of the full hierarchical path marked by ">" symbols, the company said.

The change affects all smartphone and tablet searches while desktop results remain unchanged. The company said it made the change because of limited screen space, noting breadcrumbs often get cut off on smaller displays.

Enshittification Continues

[organgtool]

Google, your search services have become extremely compromised due to SEO and it's getting harder to find useful information on your site. Meanwhile, it's becoming easier to ask an AI for an answer and get something reasonably close to a valid answer that we may not need to use internet searches as often. Now is the time to improve your user experience, not make it less useful!

This change reminds me of the way that a lot of services replaced useful timestamps with shit like "last month". They used my own computing resources (via Javascript) to turn a useful timestamp into virtually useless information. A lot happened since then and I need specificity to form a timeline and you threw away that information. Worse yet, screenshots of those services have become virtually useless as evidence because now you also need to know the exact date and time that the screenshot was taken to understand what is meant by "yesterday".

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[gweihir]

The solution is really simple: Do not use Google search. It is the crappy, uninformed choice.

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[Petersko]

Kind of like Capitalism. It's the worst system except for all the others. :)

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[gweihir]

Not true in this case. Better search engines exist.

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[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

Such as?

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[Petersko]

What an astonishing way to invalidate your own point. You could have replied in a word or two, and been correct. Instead you spent four condescending sentences saying you choose not to.

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[gweihir]

Hahahaha, mocking somebody is best when they are to dumb to understand what is going on! Nice!

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[snowshovelboy]

Bing

seriously though

[snowshovelboy]

My favorite search engine right now is https://millionshort.com/

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[Wolfier]

Meanwhile, it's becoming easier to ask an AI for an answer and get something reasonably close to a valid answer that we may not need to use internet searches as often

Have you considered the possibilities that this is the direction the tech giants actually want to push? Together with "AI Safety", at some point a small number of people will be totally in control what you can actually find. What's stopping them right now is the fact that people already getting used to the way search works, and any drastic change would cause an uproar.

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[Fly Swatter]

In this case it is that phone screens are still too small, stop trying to use them as a computer. I was using my car's 'app' for the first time in a while and the updated version has several buttons that go off the bottom of the screen with no ability to scroll down to them.

Sure I can blame the app or my large font settings, small screens are still small screens. They suck.

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[test321]

This change reminds me of the way that a lot of services replaced useful timestamps with shit like "last month".

Which includes slashdot. On the mobile version of the website, the page always has news published "30 minutes ago", which makes it useless. It's a time relative to the moment I last loaded the page, which could have been a minute ago or last week. I won't know if the page is up to date unless I reload the page, which defeats the purpose of displaying a timestamp.

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[mrbester]

After all that effort to enable "Rich Results", which includes breadcrumbs, to get higher up the results list as dictated by Google themselves, they're binning it. Thanks a lot. Their "canonical" URLs can fuck off while they're at it, along with those"soft 404s" they keep complaining about (but no user ever has).

Screen size

[darkshadow]

Did they consider what happens when someone rotates their phone?

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[bhcompy]

Or pinches to zoom out, or uses a folding screen, or a tablet, or or or. Google is worse now than Apple ever was with trying to force users into a very small box of their design

Breadcrumb?

[bgarcia]

Am I the only one who has no idea what a "URL Breadcrumb" is?

All I see in my Chrome browser's URL bar is a URL.

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[hawk]

You spray your DNS chicken tenders lightly with UDP oil, and then the URL breadcrumbs stick as you bake.

yummy!

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[jenningsthecat]

Am I the only one who has no idea what a "URL Breadcrumb" is?

All I see in my Chrome browser's URL bar is a URL.

First, TFA contains a visual example so you can see what they're talking about. Second, the change applies to links in search results, not what you see in your URL bar.

That said, I remember a time when Google also wanted to 'de-clutter' the URL bar in Chrome, and I'm glad they gave up on that shit before it infected other browsers. I examine and edit URL bar contents frequently, both as an easy way to back up to a higher level in the hierarchy and to strip tracking shit from Amazon and similar URLs.

How about?

[Virtucon]

How about you just stop tracking everything we do Google, Meta?!? That would be a much better idea.