Breadcrumb Trail for SEO?

[Trupanion]

Due to the fact that we aren't in the #1 position, (dropped from #5 to page 2 - You have to love Devs and IT), our heads have hired a SEO Audit/Consultant company to review everything we are doing.

I would like to post some of the things they are telling us to do, in which I don't 100% agree with  and would like some other professional feedback.  Especially since their site isn't marketed very well.

http://www.trupanionpetinsurance.com Disclaimer: (this site was a complete nightmare when I started a year and a half ago. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be addressed.)

Breadcrumb Trail

They have asked us to implement a Breadcrumb trail on every page, where the final page is the only H1 Tag.

1. Are breadcrumb trials important for SEO?  (I know they are helpful for Users, but SEO)
2. Are they important for Search Engines to track back for structure.
3. Any thoughts about them?

Similar question asked in February : http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-important-are-breadcrumbs

[EGOL]

We have bread crumbs on our main site and as Dejan describes.... "Another neat thing is in the SERPs when you get little: Top Level > Main Category > Sub Category type links under your snippet. "  .... lots of these extra links appear in our SERPs.

Also, just yesterday we started adding breadcrumbs to our second most important site.  This is part of a redesign for a site that was built a long time ago. It is a medium-size handbuilt site and adding the breadcrumbs is going to be a little costly.

We believe that breadcrumbs are very important for visitors, they help communicate the structure of your site to google and are important for making the navigation structure links appear in the Google  SERPs.

[brycebertola]

and sorry for the duplicate reply..

[brycebertola]

Breadcrumbs are a great way to create "Virtual" content hubs, and establish yourself as an authority on a topic or theme.

[Trupanion]

Thank you both for the feedback.

[RyanKent]

I am not aware of any direct SEO advantages to using breadcrumbs. More specifically, I have not seen any indication that breadcrumbs are considered as part of Google's algorithm.

The only Matt Cutts video I have seen on the topic is 18 months old, and he just shared "users like them". We all know that Google is chasing the best user experience, so from a purely SEO standpoint I would suggest it should be on your "want to have" list.

From a user experience, breadcrumbs are well liked. From a SERP standpoint, Google can read the HTML5 microdata embedded in a well-designed breadcrumb and then display the breadcrumb. This information could help users gain confidence in the result. The breadcrumbs do work as active links to the various categories on your site. In reality, most Google users are presently not aware of this information but that knowledge will clearly grow in time.

[EGOL]

Did you read Dejan's response on that page and notice how he referenced google videos and see how his response was marked as "good answer" and also as "staff endorsed"?

I think that you should get to work on your breadcrumbs.