Are they useful on a website?

I didn't even know about them until last night, when I was meeting with the website committee for my church's re-design of its website.

They are called breadcrumbs and according to Google, they are a form of navigation where the current location within the website is indicated by a list of pages above this page in the hierarchy, up to the main page. For example, if you were browsing the products at a department store, you might see the following hierarchy when you're on the Sneakers page:

Home > Products > Clothes > Shoes > Sneakers

Each of the categories above the current page is usually a link to the corresponding category page.

The term "breadcrumbs" is a reference to the Hansel and Gretel tale where they leave breadcrumbs as they wander the forest so they can find their way home. The metaphor is imperfect because the breadcrumbs do not represent the actual path the user took, but instead the optimal path from the home page to the current page in the hierarchy.

Well, anyway, just when I thought I 'knew it all' about websites, I learned something new last night.

I think they are pretty cool, but I'm also thinking that I'll just let my browser's Back button (with the accompanying down arrow) do the work for me, and not rush to include them on my sites.