What is the purpose of using breadcrumbs on a website?

Breadcrumbs serve an essential role in enhancing navigation on a website by providing users with a clear path or hierarchy of their current location within the site structure. This allows users to easily understand their position in the site and aids in finding their way back to previously visited pages or categories with minimal effort. The visual representation of breadcrumbs typically includes links back to higher-level pages, which can improve the overall user experience by reducing friction and making navigation more intuitive.

The presence of breadcrumbs can also contribute positively to SEO, helping search engines to crawl and index websites by providing additional context through the hierarchical structure. Users benefit from breadcrumbs as they can quickly access broader categories or sections of the site without needing to rely solely on back buttons or menu navigation. Thus, they serve a functional purpose in both usability and site architecture.