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.
Okay Google.
Long overdue, really.
Hijacking like this is one of many reasons I’m running noscript these days.
These days? I’ve been using it for years, alongside uBO. It’s astounding how many trackers and third-party sources pop up on many websites. I pissed off my last live-in girlfriend by having a pihole and blocking anything Facebook owns at the router level. She had to use mobile data for her addiction to Facebook and Instagram. But I’m not letting that tracking pixel into my home.
You get used to a page not loading, checking NoScript and whitelisting the site (temporarily). When that unleashes the additional 15-20 sites that also want access to MY computer, I look for another source. Like, I can accept they’re using a CDN, but past that, it’s stealing my bandwidth just for data harvesting, and I’ve gotten too old for that shit.
Sometimes the monopolist does something better for everyone. I’m this case, it’s selfish, of course, because they want people to click the back button to get back into their
advertising platform“ecosystem”, but it’s nice to catch a W from "Don’t be evil [when you’re building marketshare]” Google.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.
Now do the same for redirecting pages in search results, such as Microslop.
Punish them how ? Stealing even more that website’s content for their LLM ?
Google as a web search tool hasn’t been relevant for that kind of threat for a few years now.
I’d imagine instead of loading the website chrome will give you an at your own risk malicious website warning.
No, it’s still the most popular search engine by a long margin.
83% of the searches that happen on PC are done with google and 95% of the searches done on mobile are done with google.
83% of the searches that happen on PC are done with google and 95% of the searches done on mobile are done with google.
So 12% of users didn’t change the default from Edge with Bing?
Almost, Bing is 10,5% on PC and 0,72% on mobile. So yeah there’s a considerable number of people not changing the default on PC.
https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/desktop/worldwide
I never ever experienced this. Can someone give me an example (url) so i can check if it would work on my browsers?
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.
Maybe they should just stop supporting history rewriting in the JavaScript engine?
That would break history in all SPAs.
SPAs were a mistake.
My first thought was it’s an evil act by google and I’m very happy to be wrong for once
Take me back, carry me back
Down to Gasoline Alley where I started from
