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.



This is the number one reason, why I have hundreds of open tabs - I welcome this improvement.
Now do the same for hijacking control-f to replace my browsers “find” functionality.
Bookmarks, people – use 'em!
Easier to search, more organizable, easier to transfer to new devices, more resistant to being lost, they don’t eat up all your RAM … the advantages over endless open tabs are immense!
The bookmark doesn’t remind me to go back to it . The book mark system is a sink hole where links go to never be seen again.