Google Will Finally Begin Punishing Sites for Back-Button Hijacking in June

Google, on their Search Central Blog:

Today, we are expanding our spam policies to address a deceptive practice known as “back button hijacking”, which will become an explicit violation of the “malicious practices” of spam policies, leading to potential spam actions.

What is back button hijacking?
When a user clicks the “back” button in the browser, they have a clear expectation: they want to return to the previous page. Back button hijacking breaks this fundamental expectation. It occurs when a site interferes with a user’s browser navigation and prevents them from using their back button to immediately get back to the page they came from. Instead, users might be sent to pages they never visited before, be presented with unsolicited recommendations or ads, or are otherwise just prevented from normally browsing the web.

Why are we taking action?
We believe that the user experience comes first. Back button hijacking interferes with the browser’s functionality, breaks the expected user journey, and results in user frustration.

Good for Google to penalize sites playing such dirty tricks, but, if they believe the user experience comes first, why are they only addressing this now in 2026? Here’s a Reddit thread from 15 years ago: “Why the fuck do websites hijack the back button? Its fucking annoying”. And why are they waiting until June to enforce it? Penalize these dickheads now.

I don’t see much back-button hijacking personally, perhaps because I don’t visit sketchy websites, but this entire issue only exists because of JavaScript. If web pages were documents, this wouldn’t even be possible.

★ Tuesday, 14 April 2026