WTF is back button hijacking?

Opinions on the tactic remain sharply divided: critics view it as a manipulative tactic that degrades the user experience, while some publishers argue it has become a necessary defensive measure against shrinking referral traffic, tougher monetization conditions and growing pressure on audience acquisition. 

WTF is back button hijacking?

Back-button hijacking has existed in various forms for more than a decade. A piece of code manipulates a user’s page history by inserting something else when they click “back.” Typically, it inserts a page that contains content recommendations, another webpage on the site, or an ad.

Google is now deeming this a violation of its spam policy, calling it a “malicious practice” in a blog post published April 13, giving website owners two months’ notice before going after those that implement this. (Google AdSense announced on May 8 that it will drop the browser back button trigger for vignette ads by June 15 as well, meaning full-screen ads that appear between page loads will no longer be served when a user hits the back button.) 

Google said it is cracking down on back button hijacking after seeing a “rise of this type of behavior.” 

“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,” the Google blog post reads.

In a recent Google search, clicking through to a New York Post article and then using the back button redirected away from search results to a curated Post page offering article recommendations. The New York Post did not respond to a request for comment.

This can also be called “back-button content interception,” according to a report on the Google update authored by Dicker, and shared with Digiday.

“Back button hijacking is a terrible, dark UX pattern… to deceive or manipulate users into doing things they don’t really want to do,” said Barry Adams, founder of Polemic Digital, an SEO and audience growth consultancy for news publishers. “And this is a very clear one where people just want to go back to where they came from, and the website doesn’t allow them to do that because they’ve hijacked the back button.” 

How does back button hijacking work?

Some website owners have designed their own custom systems to mess with users’ page history. Third-party ad platforms or content recommendation engines — such as Taboola and Outbrain — also offer this functionality to publishers that they can choose to toggle on or off, according to Adams. 

“Those that do [keep the feature on] see significant engagement from readers who read more articles,” a Taboola spokesperson said.

Outbrain declined to comment.

Why do publishers do it?

It’s a way for publishers to get more pageviews out of a site visitor, or to serve an ad before the visitor leaves their site.

It’s unclear how many publishers implement back button hijacking tactics. Adams called it a “relatively commonplace” practice to inject one extra page into a site visitor’s browser history. And none of the sources interviewed for this story could say with certainty how much money this was making publishers.

But some publishers defend the tactic, saying the rise in back-button hijacking has been in direct response to referral traffic declines and accompanying monetization pressures — many of which have been caused by Google’s constant algorithm changes. 

“Google has kind of pissed publishers off so much… [and they] started to realize that they’re having to get users other ways and keep people on their sites,” Dicker said. “It’s finding the balance. [Google referral traffic is] still very, very important to publishers. It’s just not as important as it was.”

While some publishers find back button hijacking beneficial for engagement and monetization purposes, it degrades the user experience on the open web, which Google wants to protect, according to Scott Messer, principal and founder of Messer Media. 

“A back button, should it be publisher’s revenue?” Messer said. “If somebody comes into your restaurant, are you going to make them pay to leave?”

And how valuable is the site visitor triggering a back button hijack, anyway? “You’re probably monetizing your worst traffic,” Messer said. “That article wasn’t the right one for them, maybe they came there by accident.”

What do publishers stand to lose if they ignore Google’s warnings?

If publishers decide not to remove or disable back button hijacking tactics, they risk Google’s enforcement and a lower ranking in Google search, which would hurt their search traffic — a referral source that has already taken massive hits. Google may even choose to remove webpages or sites found to be implementing back button hijacking practices from search results entirely, Adams said.

Many publishers have cited losing a third or more of their site traffic from Google since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries shown at the top of search results.

The cost of getting de-indexed from Google search isn’t worth the small revenue publishers are making from back-button hijacking, Adams said.

“There’s one publisher I spoke with who has this built into their recommendation engine… and they said, we are just going to turn it off, because it wasn’t really making them a lot of money anyway,” Adams said. “I think that’s the path of least resistance anyway. Maybe a few extra percent revenue you get per user — that, compared to the potential traffic loss, I think it would make sense for publishers to just get rid of it.”

But Adams said this will feel like another blow to publishers, who already have a “strained relationship” with Google. About two years ago, Google updated its site reputation abuse policy that ultimately hurt the search rankings of publishers’ sites that published content from third parties, such as affiliate content or freelancers.

“One complaint I heard is that it’s another thing specifically aimed at the news and publishing industry,” Adams said. 

Dicker said a few publishing execs he’s spoken with are willing to make that gamble. They’re choosing not to remove their back button hijacking tactics to see what kind of impact this will have on their search referral traffic.

In its blog post, Google said sites that are penalized for back button hijacking but then fix the issue could submit a request to have the demotion in search results reconsidered.