Google will penalize sites that mess with your browser’s back button

Google’s cracking down on an annoying behavior called back button hijacking. The practice, which sees websites interfere with a browser’s back button to stop users easily navigating away or to send them to pages they wouldn’t otherwise have visited, now officially runs afoul of Google Search’s spam policies, meaning you should see them in search results less often.

Google detailed the change in a blog post today. The post says that back button hijacking has been on the rise lately and, because it’s objectively bad for the user experience, it’ll be designated a “malicious practice,” a change that means sites that mess with your back button can face consequences like lower search ranking.

The blog post warns website owners not to use “any script or technique that inserts or replaces deceptive or manipulative pages into a user’s browser history that prevents them from using their back button to immediately get back to the page they came from.” This can be accidental on the part of a site owner; Google says back button hijacking can be implemented by advertising platforms, among other causes. Still, the post says, site owners are “expected to” make sure that’s not happening.

This change is still a couple of months away, slated to take effect on June 15. After that, sites that engage in back button hijacking will be subject to penalties on Search.

If you run a website, you’ve got some work to do to make sure nothing’s interfering with the back button. If you’re a regular internet user, though, the change should mean that browsing will be a little less annoying come summer.