Can I mark up breadcrumbs without showing them? (responsive design)

[MarloSchneider]

I am working on a site that has responsive design. We use faceted search for the desktop version but implemented a style of breadcrumbs for the mobile version as sidebars take up too much screen real estate.

On the desktop design we are putting a display:none in front of the breadcrumbs. If we mark up those breadcrumbs and they are behind a display none, can we still get the rich snippets? Will Google see this is cloaking?

In follow up, is there a way to markup breadcrumbs in the or somewhere else that is constant?

[evolvingSEO]

Hey Spencer

While I'm not truly sure how this will respond, I bet if you use the structured data tester it will give you an answer. In my research as well, I don't think it's a good idea to use display:none (resource) - but my feeling is if you do this correctly, the breadcrumbs will show in the SERPs.

-Dan

[MarloSchneider]

We have faceted navigation for the desktop version, so breadcrumbs are overkill. In the mobile version all of the faceted nav disappears, but we show the breadcrumbs.

We just aren't sure how marking up breadcrumbs functions with responsive if they only show on one version.

[Doc_Sheldon]

Spencer, I wouldn't expect that they would see it as cloaking, no. And I would think that your markup would carry through.Seems like there's a better way to handle that than nodisplay for mobile, though. Can't you just drop that element, according to what your media query reports?

I've never seen breadcrumbs called in the head before. Just curious... why would you want to do that?