Breadcrumbs to be or not to be?

Breadcrumb position?

Krug would have you place them at the top of the page.

But who puts them there?

A quick look at 50 sites randomly picked from google and my ballooning favorites found 1/50 who used this position.

Why would you put it there?

It is easy to see, it's the first thing you come to so from an accessibility point of view that's great, they know where they are without any problem. It does not get cluttered up with the rest of the page. It really does not impact the rest of the page in this position.

But NED23's don't like it and 49/50 other pages did not like it. Probably because it looks a little lost up there. It does not have any distinctive style as we are trying not to detract from the rest of the page.

If I move it to the more conventional position above the main content title...

I personally don't like it there as it interfers with my main title and in later pages you have the primary and local navigation plus the breadcrumb all in the same area.

So do you need it at all? For the home page and second level pages probably not. You can see where you are and what your options are but once you get to lower levels it is concievable that you could be in to a long article for instance covering a number of pages, and lose where you are without having a breadcrumb. By losing I don't mean you could not get home or back to the second level nav but rather have difficulty returning to the original list of publications you choose the article from and there is nothing worse than having to start over when looking though a list for something so yes I do need a breadcrumb and contrary to the "norm" I am going to leave it at the top of the page.