Google To Take Action Against Fake Search Results Injected Into Browser History

Google made a clear stance late Friday on the Google Webmaster blog that they will not tolerate webmasters pushing deceptive search results to searchers through the use of browser history spamming techniques.

The technique uses a method of detecting a click on the browser’s back button. When clicked, a user is not sent back to the page they came from, i.e. the search results, but rather a page that looks like search results. Google explained, a “users click the “back” button on their browser, they land on a new page that they’ve never visited before.” This only happens when the user is “coming from a search results page may think that they’re going back to their search results.” But “instead, they’re taken to a page that looks similar, but is actually entirely advertisements.”

Here is a picture of what the page may look like, but keep in mind, it may look different, since the webmaster is controlling the look and content on this page:

Michael Wyszomierski from Google’s Search Quality Team, said Google “may take action on, including removal of, sites which violate our quality guidelines, including for inserting deceptive or manipulative pages into a user’s browser history.”