2026-04-16 11:01:21

Google is expanding its “spam policies” in a bid to address “back button hijacking”.

The technology giant – which is behind the Chrome browser – is trying to crack down on the “deceptive practice”, which occurs when a website prevents a user from returning to the previous page they just came from, after the user has clicked the back button on their browser.

Instead, some are directed to websites they haven’t previously visited, or they are “presented with unsolicited recommendations or ads”, according to Google.

But in a new blog post, titled Introducing a new spam policy for “back button hijacking”, Google said: “We are expanding our spam policies to address a deceptive practice known as “back button hijacking”, which will become an explicit violation of the “malicious practices” of spam policies, leading to potential spam actions.”

Google is taking action in an attempt to improve its “user experience”.

The tech giant has revealed back button hijacking will be deemed a “malicious practice” – resulting in websites who carry it out being down-ranked in Google searches, or even removed completely – from June 15th, 2026.

Google added: “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. 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.

“We’ve seen a rise of this type of behavior, which is why we’re designating this an explicit violation of our malicious practices policy, which says:

“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.

Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site’s performance in Google Search results. To give site owners time to make any needed changes, we’re publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on June 15, 2026. (sic)”

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