Structural Navigation vs Managed Navigation in SharePoint

Hi Friends,

In this post we are going to learn about the navigation options present in SharePoint Online.

Below are the two main out of the box navigation options in SharePoint
1) Structured Navigation
2) Managed Navigation

What is Structured Navigation?
This is SharePoint out of the box navigation used by default and it is based on the site structure we define for our portal.

Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages using Structured Navigation.

PROS	CONS
Navigation will be updated automatically whenever Sites are added. Easy to configure. Pages are automatically added. Security trimmed, so if a user doesn’t have access to a link it will not appear in the top navigation.	Slower performance with complex navigation structure having more than 10 levels. URLs are not friendly and can be hard to memorize. Homepages belonging to structured navigation links do not appear in search when you type a search term. Cannot tag a structured navigation link to a document that it may relate to.

What is a Managed Metadata Navigation?

Managed Metadata is a hierarchical collection of centrally managed terms that we can define, and then use as attributes. It uses a dedicated term set for site navigation and the terms correspond to the friendly URL segment created.

Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages using Managed Navigation

PROS	CONS
Easy to maintain. Significantly faster page loads. Pages with term show up in search results. Documents tagged with navigation term show up in search results along with homepage of term. Friendly URLs that are easy to remember. Easy to maintain with more options to target search. Pages are automatically added.	Not security trimmed, so if a user doesn’t have access to a link in the top navigation they will still see it but can’t get to it. Sites are not automatically added. Cannot be used across site collections.

Hope this helps...