Advanced Breadcrumbs Best Practices for Magento 2

✅ Keep "Deepest Path" as strategy unless you have a specific reason to change it
✅ Set negative weights on non-product categories like "Sale", "New Arrivals", "Clearance" — these are marketing categories, not structural ones
✅ Enable JSON-LD structured data — it's the main way search engines pick up breadcrumbs for rich results
✅ Use product-level overrides sparingly — only for edge cases where the automatic system fails
✅ Test breadcrumbs by viewing page source (not just visually) to confirm they're server-rendered
✅ Set custom labels per store view for multi-language stores

❌ Don't set weights on every category — only use weights where the default strategy picks the wrong path
❌ Don't use "First Assigned" strategy — it's unpredictable and depends on internal Magento sort order
❌ Don't disable JSON-LD unless you have another structured data source for breadcrumbs
❌ Don't forget to exclude non-structural categories (Sale, Seasonal, Brand-only) with negative weights
❌ Don't enable breadcrumbs on every page type just because you can — cart and checkout breadcrumbs add little SEO value

Use case: Single-language store with a straightforward category tree (Clothing > Men/Women > Subcategories)

Configuration:

General:

• Enable Module: Yes

Display Settings:

• Show Home Crumb: Yes
• Home Label: Home
• Show Current Page: Yes
• Separator: >

Structured Data:

• Enable JSON-LD: Yes
• Include Home in JSON-LD: Yes

Category Selection:

• Strategy: Deepest Path
• Exclude Non-Anchor: No

Page Types:

• Enabled: Category Pages, Product Pages, CMS Pages

Result: Clean breadcrumbs like Home > Clothing > Men > Jackets > Product Name. JSON-LD generates matching structured data. No weights needed — deepest path handles everything automatically.

Use case: Store has both structural categories (Clothing > Shoes > Sneakers) and marketing categories (Sale, New In, Best Sellers, Gift Ideas)

Configuration:

Same as Scenario 1, plus:

Category weights:

• "Sale" category: weight -1 (excluded)
• "New In" category: weight -1 (excluded)
• "Best Sellers" category: weight -1 (excluded)
• "Gift Ideas" category: weight -1 (excluded)
• All structural categories: weight 0 (default, uses strategy)

Result: Products in both "Sneakers" and "Sale" will always show Home > Clothing > Shoes > Sneakers > Product, never Home > Sale > Product. Marketing categories are excluded from breadcrumb consideration entirely.

Use case: Store with EN, NL, DE store views

Configuration:

Same base config, plus per store view:

EN store view:

• Home Label: Home
• Cart Label: Shopping Cart
• Account Label: My Account

NL store view:

• Home Label: Home
• Cart Label: Winkelwagen
• Account Label: Mijn Account

DE store view:

• Home Label: Startseite
• Cart Label: Warenkorb
• Account Label: Mein Konto

Result: Breadcrumbs display in the correct language per store view. Category names are already translated via Magento's category store view data.

Use case: Large store where products belong to many categories and you want specific categories to take priority (e.g., brand categories should always win over generic ones)

Configuration:

Category weights:

• "Nike" (brand category): weight 100
• "Adidas" (brand category): weight 100
• "Running Shoes" (type category): weight 50
• "Men's Shoes" (gender category): weight 25
• "Sale": weight -1

Strategy: Highest Weight (since you're actively managing weights)

Result: A Nike running shoe shows Home > Nike > Running Shoes > Product Name (brand-first hierarchy). Without weights, deepest path might pick a different route.

Use case: Store where SEO is the top priority, want maximum search engine visibility

Configuration:

• Strategy: Deepest Path (gives most hierarchy context)
• JSON-LD: Enabled
• Include Home in JSON-LD: No (Google recommends omitting home for cleaner rich results — though including it is also fine)
• Show Current Page: Yes (final breadcrumb confirms to users and crawlers what page they're on)
• Page Types: Category, Product, CMS (skip cart/checkout/account — these are noindex pages anyway on most stores)
• Set negative weights on all non-structural categories

Result: Clean, consistent, deep breadcrumb paths across all indexable pages. Structured data matches visual breadcrumbs exactly.

Why it's wrong: If every category has a weight, you're micromanaging instead of letting the strategy work. It becomes unmaintainable as your catalog grows.

Correct approach: Only set weights where the default strategy picks the wrong path. Use negative weights to exclude non-structural categories. Leave everything else at 0.

Why it's wrong: If no categories have weights (all are 0), this strategy falls back to deepest path silently. It's confusing and means you have a misleading config.

Correct approach: Only use "Highest Weight" if you've actually set meaningful weights on your categories. Otherwise use "Deepest Path".

Why it's wrong: Cart, checkout, and account pages are usually noindex. Breadcrumbs there add visual noise without SEO benefit.

Correct approach: Enable breadcrumbs on Category, Product, and CMS pages. Only add other page types if they're indexed and you want navigation context there.

Why it's wrong: If you have another module also outputting BreadcrumbList JSON-LD (e.g., a rich snippets module), you'll get duplicate structured data. Google may ignore both or pick the wrong one.

Correct approach: Disable breadcrumb output in other modules. Use Advanced Breadcrumbs as the single source for both visual breadcrumbs and JSON-LD.