Google has made some controversial decisions related to its flagship search engine in recent years, but this one will probably be pretty popular.
The company announced in a developer note (via 9to5google) that it will start punishing websites that hijack users’ back buttons in their web browsers.
In case you’re not familiar with this phenomenon, sometimes you’ll click a link on Google and realize it’s not what you wanted. When you click the back button, instead of being taken back to Google, you’ll be taken to some other part of the website, or an ad, or something else you didn’t want to see. This practice is also known as “history manipulation,” according to our colleagues at Lifehacker.
“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,” Google wrote in an update to its spam policy explaining the decision.
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I have definitely encountered this phenomenon over the years, and clearly so have others, given that Google is doing something about it.
Anyway, as it is wont to do, Google will penalize sites that engage in this practice by limiting their visibility in search rankings beginning on June 15. It is now officially categorized as a “malicious practice” by the company.
“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,” Google wrote.
A malicious practice is something that “[creates] a mismatch between user expectations and the actual outcome, leading to a negative and deceptive user experience, or compromised user security or privacy.” As someone who has experienced back button hijacking, I would say it definitely fits the bill.
Google also had some blunt advice for sites and developers that use this practice: “You are expected to remove or disable it.”
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PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
