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.
Well, you want to be using Firefox in the first place. Chrome is just data-collection. You want uBO and NoScript and learn to check everything when a page fails to load.
Thanks for the info but, no offence, this was not my question. I never noticed once that ‘going back’ would bring me to the same or a new one. I use Vanadium on the phone and for browsing on desktop Firefox and Mulvad.
No offence taken. Even on Firefox this seems to be a regular issue on sites like hotel/travel booking. When you don’t buy anything, the back button sends you to a landing page with more options instead of operating as designed. Weird as it is, Google’s move might make life better for Firefox users. I’ve been conditioned to open everything in a new tab because of such shenanigans.