By Alex Perry
Publication Date: 2026-04-14 17:00:00
Google has made some controversial decisions related to its flagship search engine in recent years, but this one will probably be pretty popular.
The company announced in a developer note (via 9to5google) that it will start punishing websites that hijack users’ back buttons in their web browsers.
In case you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, sometimes you’ll click a link on Google and realize it’s not what you wanted. When you click the back button, instead of being taken back to Google, you’ll be taken to some other part of the website, or an ad, or something else you didn’t want to see. This practice is also known as “history manipulation,” according to our colleagues at Lifehacker.
“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,” Google wrote in an update to its spam policy…
