tedster - 6:50 pm on Aug 14, 2009 (gmt 0)

@tedster - do you mean putting something like: [Widget] - [Blue Internet-tools] - fluffy and happy

Yes, that's the direction I'm thinking about. Adding breadcrumbs and doing it well is a big deal. You do want them to help the user - so they do need to match your website's taxonomy and architecture. But with each breadcrumb trail potentially including the word "widget" in anchor text three times or more, you're adding a lot to each page. That's the kind of thing that even made trouble back at the Florida update.

It's not too severe a restriction. After all, look at WebmasterWorld's breadcrumbs - we don't avoid ALL repetition. But we also don't include "Forum" at every level of the hierarchy, either. And the breadcrumbs were there at launch for us, and not a later addition. That can be a factor.

So it takes serious thought about your site structure and labeling to do it well. I've worked with sites where we spent MANY man-hours of effort over a few weeks to get those labels right.