Google Webmaster reporting breadcrumb problems

I have the same problem… But 30 errors: https://prntscr.com/p8z5q2

“Either “name” or “item.name” should be specified”

This error means that the breadcrumb markup does not have a title. This could mean that either the page itself doesn’t have a defined title (appears as (no title) in the page overview) or has an empty breadcrumb title. To check the breadcrumb title, please follow the steps here.

@hauntingfox If you have a similar issue, please open a new request. That way it’s easier to track issues and provide assistance. Thanks!

Two notes:

1) This has happened after the last Yoast SEO plugin update – nothing else was altered on the website.

2) Can’t find Post/Page/Taxonomy that gives a reported error, like listed:

https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1

So, most probably something with the plugin.

An idea:

The page that is shown in Breadcrumb “tree” when following the link reported by Google is an older one, created before the Gutenberg (WordPress 5 version).

All the listed “problematic” pages are made with the old version “Classic”.

The list gives a mess – showing a list of all the posts, as if they are somehow under one single post’s taxonomy (but they aren’t, not the same category, nor the same tags even). Just take a look:

https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1

Tried switching an old post to blocks and see if it gets fixed. Still gives the “strange” list.

EDIT: in case you are overworked and haven’t noticed:

I see many topics in the support forum with the same problem – all coincides in timing with the latest plugin update.

Thanks in advance for any help – the first reply didn’t help – it’s all set up properly from what I could tell.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin. Reason: additional info - if it helps

Hi @bikegremlin,

This does not look like a regular WordPress page: https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1

That is the subpage of a category, although we could not say for sure what is creating those URLs in the first place. The correct URL is https://www.bikegremlin.com/1864/press-fit-patrone/.

Please send us a screenshot of your permalink settings, so that we can try to replicate this issue on our end. In addition, are pages like this regular posts, or custom post types?

We are looking forward to your reply.

I haven’t created any of those links – not consciously.

Permalink structure used is:

mydomain.com/%post_id%/%postname%/

I haven’t checked for those links before, not sure what caused them to appear.

Links like:
https://www.bikegremlin.com/?cat=-1

exist on all of my websites. Those with lots of posts that can be divided into more pages list, also have:

https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/6/?cat=-1

Max number of page depends on how many pages the
https://www.bikegremlin.com/?cat=-1

Also, ?cat=-1 can use any number (10, 200…) – with the same result from what I could tell.

Like this:

https://www.bikegremlin.com/?cat=-1245

EDIT: required info:

Pages like the linked one are regular posts – no custom posts on the site, not a single one.
https://www.bikegremlin.com/1864/press-fit-patrone/

P.S.
Depending on the number of posts, this can be added on many wordpress sites (from what I could test – randomly picking a few):

https://anydomain-wordpress.com/page/2/?cat=-1

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.

Hi,

Google released a Breadcrumb Report as part of the Search Console. See https://twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1174693878835875840.

Somehow, Google crawled your site and found these kinds of URLs like https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1. We are not sure how they did that.

Upon looking at the source code we on those kinds of pages it lacks the “name” , “ID” and “URL” schema for the last breadcrumb listitem. See image: https://pasteboard.co/IyTUvsT6.png. We are not sure why Yoast is failing to output it.

We are also not sure if these errors are important to resolve as the canonical of the page points somewhere else. See: https://pasteboard.co/IyTV97J.png.

Clicking on it: https://www.bikegremlin.com/1864/press-fit-patrone/page/4/ redirects you to https://www.bikegremlin.com/1864/press-fit-patrone/. So that post is what Google is expected to crawl and index as Google is expected to follow the canonical tag. Indeed, we can see Yoast is outputting the breadcrumbs for the last items on that post correctly. See image: https://pasteboard.co/IyTVXeo.png.

We need your help as we are not sure why Yoast is at a minimum not outputting the breadcrumbs on https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1 as in our testing Yoast outputs the right breadcrumbs on that kind of page.

If you were to perform a conflict check as described here https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/ and have a standard theme and only Yoast SEO active and then check the source code on https://www.bikegremlin.com/page/4/?cat=-1 and look for that last listItem does it show name, ID, and URL? This guide explains more about how to check the source code: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/view-page-source-site/

Same problem here… I hope Yoast releases a fix for that!

First I wish to thank you for taking the time to look into this – it is appreciated.

I find that not only my website shows the “funny” links. Some examples:

https://techcrunch.com/page/6/?cat=-1
https://www.bbcamerica.com/page/3/?cat=-1
https://variety.com/page/4/?cat=-1

I tested on a test website.

https://test.bikegremlin.com/page/2/?cat=-1

Installed Twenty Nineteen and disabled ALL the plugins.

EDIT: cache caused problem. Strange links remain with all the plugins disabled.

If I make all the posts uncategorized, the “strange links” are no longer working (as they shouldn’t work any time).

Looks like a WordPress itself is a problem, but it just got reported by Google after the Breadcrumb reports introduction.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bike Gremlin.

It seems that somehow Google discovered a URL format that is only used when your site doesn’t have permalinks defined. The plain permalink option used variables (like ?cat=-1) to determine the content to display.

Doing a little research the ?cat=-1 tells the post/page to show all content except what belongs to category if of 1 (which is likely the default category).

I also noticed that the canonical of that page doesn’t match the URL

URL: /page/4/?cat=-1
Canonical: /1864/press-fit-patrone/page/4/

URL: /page/5/?cat=-1
Canonical: /1057/podesavanje-drumskog-kormana/page/5/

I cannot reproduce this in a default install and the test install you provided is marked noindex so the canonical doesn’t output. And the test install doesn’t appear to have breadcrumbs enabled since I don’t see them in the source code for a post (the easiest place to spot them). If you enable breadcrumbs on the test install you provided, is the breadcrumb markup valid on an equivalent page of https://test.bikegremlin.com/page/2/?cat=-1?

I’ve enabled breadcrumbs on the test site – how do I check if breadcrumbs are OK?
I’d rather not submit the test stuff to google if I don’t have to.

To check for breadcrumb markup, please search the source code for the test site.

If you are unsure how to view the source code, please review this knowledge base article: How To View The Page Source of Your Site

I searched for breadcrumb markup on the /page/2/?cat=-1 URL and did not find any which matches the behavior of my test site. However, I do see valid breadcrumb markup on the post /cat0/test-5/ so breadcrumbs are enabled and working as expected on your test site.

The next step would be to start adding to your test site starting with plugins one at a time and then the theme (parent then child, if you have a child theme) to determine what causes breadcrumbs to appear on the /page/2/?cat=-1 URL.

Closed. No further concerns.

@bikegremlin what was the solution that resolved your issue? I’m not seeing it in the thread here. Been trying to figure out this exact same issue for my site as well but keep striking out everywhere. Thanks! =D

I stopped having the problem (for now at least). However, it was not a solution I would consider “normal”.

Anyway: for reasons that have nothing to do with the noted problem, I have migrated the website to a different subdomain (bicikl.bikegremlin.com).

Leaving a simple static HTML website on https://www.bikegremlin.com.

In the mean time, no (sub)domain has reported any breadcrumb errors. As far as I could tell: the problem appeared, then disappeared mysteriously.

Didn’t give it much time, due to other stuff needed to work on. Unfortunately. I usually keep trying to figure out a problem cause, to both fix it and prevent it from re-occuring. But with this – I had run out of ideas, then it had disappeared and I didn’t pursue it any further.

Thanks for the follow up @bikegremlin

@elavd & @hauntingfox did you ever find a solution?