A web crawler reads page content, extracts content and URLs, places them into an index, and then follows links in that index to further build the index and content corpus. Google and others have special crawlers that execute JavaScript to crawl content delivered dynamically.
replyCrawlers do not use the browser back button or browser history. So the only way Google could observe such problems is by observing live human browsing behavior.
Also, we know from exhibits in the U.S. DOJ trial that Google does use Chrome browsing behavior as a signal in search ranking. It’s not a hypothetical.
> Crawlers do not use the browser back button or browser history.
replyCouldn't you instrument the crawler's browser engine to observe whether (while crawling) the page does any behaviors that would result in back button hijacking? No back buttons have to be clicked.
You just have to watch whether the mousetrap is set. Since you know how mousetraps work, you don't have to grab the cheese.