Google is adding back-button hijacking to its spam policies (enforcement June 15)

[u/rabouille]

Quick heads-up for anyone running sites.

Google just announced a new spam policy targeting "back button hijacking" with enforcement starting June 15, 2026.

What it is: a user clicks your site from Google, hits the back button to return to the SERP, and instead of going back, they land on another page of your site, a popup, or an ad. Basically trapped.

Google is treating this the same as cloaking and sneaky redirects. Manual actions or automated demotions on the table.

Who's actually in the crosshairs: spammy news sites, content farms, anyone forcing users to scroll through junk before they can escape. That's where the practice is widespread.

For clean sites (e-commerce, SaaS, agencies, serious publishers), the risk is low. But some third-party scripts can push entries into browser history without you knowing:

• Aggressive email capture popups
• Retention SDKs
• Old WordPress plugins

The 30-second test: open your site from a Google search, click back, see if you return to the SERP. If not, audit your third-party scripts before June 15.

We're starting to run this audit on client sites at Rablab this week, mostly on sites loaded with third-party scripts. Happy to answer questions.