Correct microdata markup for breadcrumbs

Question

On researching how to do microdata for webpage breadcrumbs, I've found a couple of methods and I'm not sure which is correct. Firstly, my basic breadcrumbs in the HTML look like this:

<div>
  <a href="/">Root page</a>
  <a href="/category">Category page</a>
  <a href="/category/this-page">This page</a>
</div>

Now, do I structure it like this (as I've seen in an example on SchemaOrg:

<ol itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList">
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a href="/" itemprop="item">
      <span itemprop="name">Root page</span>
    </a>
  </li>
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a href="/category" itemprop="item">
      <span itemprop="name">Category page</span>
    </a>
  </li>
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a href="/category/this-page" itemprop="item">
      <span itemprop="name">This page</span>
    </a>
  </li>
</ol>

Or do I structure it like the below as I've seen in some Stackoverflow answers:

<div>
  <span itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
    <a href="/" itemprop="url">
      <span itemprop="title">Root page</span>
    </a>
  </span>
  <span itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
    <a href="/category" itemprop="url">
      <span itemprop="title">Category page</span>
    </a>
  </span>
  <span itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
    <a href="/category/this-page" itemprop="url">
      <span itemprop="title">This page</span>
    </a>
  </span>
</div>

Or a different method I don't know about yet??

Answer 1

Modern (2019) correct breadcrumbs Microdata markup is like provided below.

And if you want to complain best practices do not make the last breadcrumb item as a link on your page - you can use <span> instead of <a> in a such manner:

<ol itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList">
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing" itemprop="item" href="/" itemid="/">
      <span itemprop="name">Root page</span>
    </a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="1" />
  </li>
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing" itemprop="item" href="/category" itemid="/category">
      <span itemprop="name">Category page</span>
    </a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="2" />
  </li>
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem">
    <span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing" itemprop="item" itemid="/category/this-page">
      <span itemprop="name">This page</span>
    </span>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="3" />
  </li>
</ol>

This code is fully compliant to BreadcrumbList (see also that item's id is required) and passes Google validation on https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool excellent.