BreadcrumbList schema: required fields and common mistakes

• ✓itemListElement with item and name for each level

• +That the last item identifies the current page and is not a link to itself where the visible breadcrumb is plain text.

These are hints, not blockers. Our validator marks them non-critical for exactly that reason: a missing optional field does not make the item invalid, and treating it as an error would make every report noisy and therefore ignorable.

• A breadcrumb in the markup that the page does not show. The two must agree.
• A position that does not start at 1 or skips a number.
• Using it to describe a URL structure rather than a user-facing path, which produces breadcrumbs nobody asked for.

Structured data describes the page; it does not make the page true. Google also requires the visible content to match, and it decides eligibility on its own published requirements — which change without notice. A valid block that matches the page is the whole of what you control.

Test it on a real URL with the free schema validator — no account, and it reports eligible, ineligible, or not applicable without inventing a score.

• Product — Marks a page as a product, with its price and availability.
• Article — Marks a page as a news or blog article. Covers BlogPosting and NewsArticle too.
• LocalBusiness — Marks a page as a physical business, with an address and opening hours.
• Organization — Marks a page as representing an organisation rather than a person.
• Person — Marks a page as being about, or written by, a person.
• WebSite — Marks the site itself, usually on the homepage.
• FAQPage — Marked a question-and-answer page. Google stopped showing these as a rich result.
• HowTo — Marked a set of steps. Google stopped showing these as a rich result.