Breadcrumb navigation refers to a navigation system where visitors are shown the “trail” to their current position, or rather, page. It can be dynamic (path-based), as in visitors are shown the exact path they took to arrive at a particular page, or static (location-based) – where the breadcrumb trail describes the hierarchy of the pages above the current page. So, if, for example, you’re on Page 0 under the Alpha category of Blog X, a sample location-based breadcrumb trail would be: Blog X >> Alpha >> Page 0.

It goes without saying that breadcrumb navigation adds usability to any site, blog or otherwise. So, why is it that so few blogs actually implement it? Off the top of my head, I can only identify About.com (example here) – and admittedly, About.com is more “site” than blog.

IMHO, the primary reason for the lack of uptake on breadcrumbs is that any usability bonus gained in using breadcrumb navigation could actually be too negligible to consider. Research results as far back as 2003 identified that the percentage of user navigation involving breadcrumb trails were often very low.

There is also the lack of navigational depth or hierarchy often associated with blogs. In most cases, you can access a large number of posts right from the main page of a blog, or jumping into a category. So, pressing the Back button to get back to the main page ends up being the most effective means of navigating around most blogs.

But if you happen to want to try implementing breadcrumb navigation on your blog, here’s a few ways you can do it. For WordPress blogs, there are two WP 2.0-compatible plugins that do it for you automagically: The WordPress Breadcrumb and the Breadcrumb Nav XT plugins. For Movable Type, refer to Adam Kalsey’s guide on how to manually implement breadcrumbs (no plugin seems to be available). And for Drupal, you can try out the new taxonomy_breadcrumb module.

So, what do you think about breadcrumb navigation? Have any of you implemented it before?

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