Google’s John Mueller said in the recent webmaster hangout at the 11:55 mark that those who implement the method of disabling the browser back button will not benefit or be hurt in the Google search results. In short, manipulating the browser back button does not result in a Google penalty.

Why? Because as Google said time and time again, bounce backs don’t influence rankings in Google.

John Mueller said the behavior of disabling a user’s common navigation is not a good user experience for your web site visitor and it might annoy your visitors. So clearly John doesn’t recommend such a practice but for search, it doesn’t make a difference.

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Forum discussion at Twitter.