Google Search to classify ‘back button hijacking’ as spam

Websites that engage in “back button hijacking” might soon appear less prominently in Google Search results as part of a new spam policy. 

Back button hijacking occurs when a site prevents users from “using their back button to immediately get back to the page they came from.” Users are instead sent to “pages they never visited before, be presented with unsolicited recommendations or ads, or are otherwise just prevented from normally browsing the web.”

As Google notes, this breaks the “fundamental expectation” of how a browser’s back button should work. Besides breaking browser functionality, it “breaks the expected user journey” and “results in user frustration.”

Back button hijacking interferes with the browser’s functionality, breaks the expected user journey, and results in user frustration. 

Google Search is now classifying back button hijacking as a violation of its “malicious practices” spam policy.