Chrome Is Preparing a Back-Button Fix for Ad Redirect Abuse

Press the Back button on certain websites in Chrome, and you may not return to the page you expected. Instead, you could land on a page you never chose to open. Sometimes, that page is an ad. Google is preparing a change in Chrome, known internally as the “Back-To-Ad intervention,” to address this behavior.

The aim is to skip history entries inserted by ad scripts when users navigate with the Back or Forward buttons.

This builds on Chrome’s existing history manipulation protections. Those protections already skip pages that add history entries without any user interaction. The new intervention goes further. It targets cases where an ad script inserts entries into the browser’s history even after a user has clicked on a page.

How the Back-To-Ad Intervention Works

According to the related commit, Chrome keeps track of whether a history entry was created by ad code. If a page creates extra entries through ad scripts and chains them together, Chrome can mark those entries as candidates for skipping.

When the user presses the Back button, Chrome can jump past those entries instead of landing on them. The same logic applies to the Forward button.

There is one important limit. If skipping those entries would keep the user on the same website, Chrome does not apply the ad-based rule. In that case, only the older history protection runs. This prevents normal navigation within a site from breaking.

Work began in December 2025, when Chrome added internal tracking to identify history entries created by ad scripts. In January 2026, it refined how it distinguishes real user actions from ad-triggered navigations. A later change introduced the skipping logic behind a feature flag, which is disabled by default.

Some websites insert hidden history entries so that pressing Back leads to an ad or another page the user did not intend to open. This creates confusion and frustration.

The Back-To-Ad intervention targets this behavior. When users press the Back button, it directs them to a page they chose to visit or interacted with.

The change is experimental, but Chrome now includes the logic to skip ad-inserted history entries.

Chrome has also made changes to how History works. A recent test groups similar visits to make past browsing easier to find.