One broken BreadcrumbList template cost a site 100% of breadcrumb URLs — fixed with a single ID change

One broken BreadcrumbList template cost a site 100% of breadcrumb URLs — fixed with a single ID change
A news network's breadcrumbs vanished from every SERP after a CMS update wrote @id values as relative paths instead of absolute URLs. Google rejected the entire BreadcrumbList on all 14,000 pages — the enhancement report showed 14k errors literally overnight. The fix was one line in the template: absolute URLs in the item field.
— 14,000 breadcrumb errors cleared in a single validation pass
— Breadcrumb display returned on 13,800 URLs within 8 days
What it means for you: relative @id and item URLs are a silent killer at scale — one template controls thousands of pages. Always absolute. Watch this: post-CMS-migration breadcrumb checks should be your first regression test.