So you thought you’d just read that webpage and then go back to the previous page? A bold assumption. All too often, clicking the back button in your browser doesn’t actually take you back. It’s called back button hijacking, and Google has thus far tolerated it. That ends in June, when the company will designate it a “malicious practice,” and any site continuing to do it will face consequences.
Back button hijacking is a way of wringing more pageviews out of visitors. It’s common on sites that live and die on search traffic. You may end up on a page because it looks like something you want, but instead of letting you leave the domain, it manipulates your page history to insert something else when you click back.
The phantom page is usually a collection of additional content suggestions or a pop-up that tries to eke out a few more clicks from each visitor. Some sites get a little more creative with it, though. For example, LinkedIn has a nasty habit of sending you “back” to the social feed after you land on a link to a profile or job posting.
Google says the back button should always do what you expect it to do—go back. Anything else amounts to a deceptive user experience that can discourage users from visiting unfamiliar pages in the future. The company isn’t inventing a new rule to address this behavior, which is apparently on the rise. Google will simply be more broadly enforcing the malicious practices policy, which says in part:
Malicious practices create a mismatch between user expectations and the actual outcome, leading to a negative and deceptive user experience, or compromised user security or privacy.
Sites that have been using back button hijacking are now under the gun to end the practice. Starting on June 15, 2026, sites using back button hijacking could be hit with either automated or manual anti-spam actions. That can result in a much lower page rank in search, which is a problem for sites that have traditionally relied on search traffic to stay afloat.
Google says that any site that uses back button hijacking should spend the next two months eliminating the practice. The early warning ensures they’ll have a chance to get it done. While some websites have designed their own systems to do this, others have back button hijacking as a consequence of a third-party library or advertising stack. Whatever the origin of the hijack, sites will want to get it sorted out before the deadline to avoid a spam designation.
