Websites that act like a super-chatty colleague who just won’t shut up and let you go when a conversation should be over are among the most annoying things on the internet. Google is now doing something about that scourge.
Picture the scene: you look up something on Google Search and — instead of relying on potentially hallucinating AI Overviews — you click through to an actual website for your information. But, when you try to leave the site by hitting the back button, your browser doesn’t immediately take you back to the previous webpage. Instead, the website first displays an “oh, while you’re here…” page that suggests other content in which you may be interested in checking out or just a bunch of ads.
This shady move that some traffic-hungry websites have adopted is called “back button hijacking.” No one in their right mind likes it, and nor does Google.
Under a new policy that 9to5Google spotted, Google will treat back button hijacking as an “explicit violation of the ‘malicious practices’ of spam policies” alongside the likes of malware. As such, it may punish websites that engage in such practices by treating them as spam and downranking them in search results.
“Back button hijacking interferes with the browser’s functionality, breaks the expected user journey and results in user frustration,” Chris Nelson, from the Google Search Quality team, wrote in the announcement. “People report feeling manipulated and eventually less willing to visit unfamiliar sites. As we’ve stated before, inserting deceptive or manipulative pages into a user’s browser history has always been against our Google Search Essentials.”
Google says it has seen an increase in back button hijacking and it’s great that the company is taking steps to combat it. Developers and website operators have until June 15 to make sure they aren’t interfering “with a user’s ability to navigate their browser history” by engaging in the practice. Google will start enforcing this policy then.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/google-search-tackles-sites-that-try-to-stop-you-from-leaving-when-you-hit-the-back-button-143302862.html?src=rss
