Google has announced that it will start punishing websites found guilty of "back button hijacking," a practice where a site intentionally breaks your browser"s back button.
You have likely experienced this before. Website developers, or sometimes ad network operators, use JavaScript to manipulate your browser"s history stack. This means when you press back (especially on mobile), instead of returning to your search results, you get sent to a completely different page full of spam, unsolicited ads, or affiliate links.
Google said it has noticed a sharp rise in this behavior, which is why the company is making back button hijacking an "explicit violation" of its malicious practices policy. Site owners have about two months from today, until June 15, 2026, to remove any script that messes with a user"s browser history. That includes checking any ad network code or third-party libraries they have installed on their websites. If they do not, they may face consequences like manual spam actions or demoted rankings in Google Search results.
The new anti-"back button hijacking" policy joins a host of other spam policies the search giant has added over the last two years. For example, the "Parasite SEO" policy targets the practice of a highly trusted, authoritative website renting out a section of its domain to a third party to host low-quality or unrelated content.
With "Parasite SEO," the third-party takes advantage of the fact that the host site has strong ranking signals to rank higher in search. Google first rolled out its spam policy against this in March 2024, then came back almost a year later with an update clarifying that it still counts as a violation even if the host site claims to have "editorial oversight" over the content.
There"s also the policy that was announced on March 5, 2024, to deal with expired domain abuse. This is when people buy expired domains that have strong, pre-existing reputations and fill them with low-value affiliate content. A spammer could buy an old, respected charity"s domain and use its old authority to sell questionable products.