Google will demote websites that hijack your browser's back button

[DragonSlayer101]

Something to look forward to: Google has announced that it will begin penalizing websites that interfere with the normal functioning of a web browser's back button. Known as back button hijacking, this behavior prevents users from navigating away from the current page or redirects them to partner sites that often serve misleading or even malicious ads for dubious products or services.

In a post on the Google Developers blog, the company said it is designating back button hijacking as a malicious practice. It added that engaging in any activity that alters the default back button behavior of web browsers will be considered an "explicit violation" of its spam policies, potentially leading to a demotion in search results.

Google has set June 15 as the deadline for non-compliant websites to remove any scripts that modify a browser's default back button behavior. This gives site owners and administrators roughly two months to comply with the new policy by removing or disabling any network code, third-party libraries, or configurations responsible for back button hijacking.

If the changes are not implemented by the deadline, offending websites may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can negatively impact traffic. The company is also urging site owners to appeal any anti-spam actions if they have already addressed the deceptive behavior and removed all malicious code from their websites.

According to Google, instances of back button hijacking have increased significantly in recent years, degrading user experience and compromising user security and privacy. The company also noted that inserting deceptive or manipulative pages into a user's browser history has long been against its policies, but did not explain why it has taken so long to take action against back button hijacking specifically.

Over the past couple of years, Google has also taken action against other forms of deceptive behavior, including parasite SEO and expired domain abuse. The former refers to tactics where websites boost traffic by hosting content on established platforms with high domain authority, while the latter involves the misuse of expired domains with strong credibility to distribute or promote malicious content.

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Google will demote websites that hijack your browser's back button

 

[Billybobjoey]

Good, can't stand when websites do that, and a lot of the big ones do!

 

[themastergoose]

They should also demote sites that spam you with messages about how good their prices are if you simply copy some text from the page. It's absolutely infuriating.

 

[Aolish]

Yeah that drives me CRAAAAAAZYYYY! X[

 

[BlackyNoir]

They did not already do that? Oh FFS...

 

[pnntmp]

Google should have done this long ago, now it hardly matters.

Up to 2024 or so, a sizable portion of the web was created for the sole purpose of spoofing Google's ranking algorithms. That was okay for Google, as they were the gateway to content and guaranteed to get their cut regardless of the search results quality. Now that the use of traditional search is being rapidly replaced by querying LLMs, Google wants to penalize the sites that prevent you from going back to the Google's search results page. Perfectly justified, from their perspective, but don't be fooled they're doing it to protect you from spam, malicious code or whatever. They are doing it to preserve their gateway role as much as possible for as long as possible.

 

[CowsGotMilk]

It's a strange thing, that browsers allow it. Everything outside the viewport should be not in reach, by the website.

 

[yRaz]

This is one of the most annoying things. "I want to leave you're website." "But wait. There is more!"

Frankly. I'm surprised it took this long.

 

[arrowflash]

I hope it really works, but it's more likely that web devs will find workarounds.

This is one of the most annoying things. "I want to leave you're website." "But wait. There is more!"

Frankly. I'm surprised it took this long.

Sometimes it even worse. I'm just browsing through a website and want to return to the previous area/section, but they hijack the back button (pressing the back button refreshes the current page instead) and I'm forced to either use the website breadcrumb links (IF they have it), or return to the front page.

Some don't even seem to do this in bad faith, it's just bad coding. There are some websites with dynamic content where the back button eventually works, but you have to press it multiple times, because every time the page is automatically refreshed, the browser sees it as navigation to a new page.

It would be great if Google also demotes websites that behave like this, even if it's not done in bad faith and it's just bad coding.

 

[Endymio]

I'm a little foggy on why the browser themselves allow this. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, shouldn't allow primary UI functions to be overridden ... disabling the back button is literally akin to reprogramming the maximize button to install a malicious device driver.

 

[m4a4]

Huh? Can't say I can think of 1 instance where I've personally seen this.

Maybe it wasn't a priority because normal sites don't do this lol

 

[bviktor]

Let’s do the same with Ctrl + K. I truly hate it.

 

[Win7user]

And, we would trust Google, why?

 

[Kashim]

Can someone explain to me why any browser would even allow the manipulation of the back button? That button serves one purpose and one purpose only, and no one should be able to changed it with scripts or other tricks.

I find it amusing that Google waited this long to do something about it when in fact they could've solved this problem years ago and basically instantly. They could've just modified Chromium (which is the core of Chrome browser as well as most of the popular browsers currently in use like Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) to disable messing with the back button. Instead of doing that they waited years and now plan to punish websites that hijack the back button.

If you're not supposed to modify the back button's behavior then why does such a feature even exist? You _can_ but you _shouldn't_ is the message I'm getting here, which makes no sense to me.

 

[Endymio]

I find it amusing that Google waited this long to do something about it when in fact they could've solved this problem years ago and basically instantly. They could've just modified Chromium (which is the core of Chrome browser as well as most of the popular browsers currently in use like Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) to disable messing with the back button...

If you're not supposed to modify the back button's behavior then why does such a feature even exist?

Looking into it, the back button itself isn't being directly hijacked. Instead, these malicious websites are pushing multiple (fake) copies of themselves into the browser history. And apparently removing this isn't easy, as there are many legitimate uses for pushing state info like this, primarily for smooth navigation on so-called single-page applications.

 

[DukeJukem]

Back button? Oh that stupid thing you tried forcing everyone to click because you're browser is too FAT to have any room left for a backspace hotkey? Yeah I remembered that thing once when I tried hitting my backspace button and it was limp.

Took me a hefty 2 minutes to migrate over to Brave immediately after discovering this wasn't a bug and something Google did on purpose. Eat my sphincter.

 

[Endymio]

Back button? Oh that stupid thing you tried forcing everyone to click because you're browser is too FAT to have any room left for a backspace hotkey? ... Took me a hefty 2 minutes to migrate over to Brave immediately after discovering this wasn't a bug and something Google did on purpose. Eat my sphincter.

Moving navigate-back functionality from backspace to Alt-L-Arrow was one of the most user-requested changes Google made, as countless people complained bitterly about losing their typing results when accidentally striking it.