Safari not going back to search results???

[bzollinger]

Hello,

I've searched the web and mac rumors and looked in the preferences for safari and can't find the answer.

When I enter search text in the address/search bar it searches as expected. It displays a list of google results. I find what I'm looking for, click on the result I want to look at. Then when I click the back button it doesn't go back to the search results. Instead safari goes to the previous webpage that it was on before I searched? What the heck?

I know I could open the search result in a new tab, but sometimes I have a quick search that I don't want to open a bunch of tabs to do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[cruisin]

Is it happening every time? How about if you use a different search engine (i.e. duckduckgo)? Are you accidentally double clicking back? Alternatively, is the mouse old and getting stuck sometimes? I had a mouse like that.

I cannot get your issue to appear for me. You can use ⌘ + click to open a new tab quickly and ⌘ + W to close the current tab as a workaround. You still have tabs, but it might be quicker using the shortcuts.

Newer versions of Safari have a swipe to go back feature. I think it showed up in Mavericks. Does this change anything?

 

[Simplicated]

This happens to me sometimes too. One of the few annoying Safari bugs that are still lingering.

 

[Nermal]

I get similar behaviour with Flickr. It's really annoying and it's great to hear that it's not just me. It is, however, bizarre that Apple would struggle to implement a browser feature that's existed since the early 90s.

 

[bzollinger]

Is it happening every time? How about if you use a different search engine (i.e. duckduckgo)? Are you accidentally double clicking back? Alternatively, is the mouse old and getting stuck sometimes? I had a mouse like that.

I cannot get your issue to appear for me. You can use ⌘ + click to open a new tab quickly and ⌘ + W to close the current tab as a workaround. You still have tabs, but it might be quicker using the shortcuts.

Newer versions of Safari have a swipe to go back feature. I think it showed up in Mavericks. Does this change anything?

Thanks for the response! And sorry for the late reply, wife had a baby yesterday!

Anyway I tried using DuckDuckGo, and the behavior went away. If I use Yahoo, every link is opened in a new tab, if I use Bing it goes away and acts like expected. Then I went back to Google as my search engine and it comes back again.

Weird, so it must be the way that the google search engine is integrated into safari?

Thanks again, I'll just use DuckDuckGo or Bing for now. Been using Google for everything for longer than I can remember probably a good time for a change anyway!

 

[KALLT]

Thanks for the response! And sorry for the late reply, wife had a baby yesterday!

Anyway I tried using DuckDuckGo, and the behavior went away. If I use Yahoo, every link is opened in a new tab, if I use Bing it goes away and acts like expected. Then I went back to Google as my search engine and it comes back again.

Weird, so it must be the way that the google search engine is integrated into safari?

Thanks again, I'll just use DuckDuckGo or Bing for now. Been using Google for everything for longer than I can remember probably a good time for a change anyway!

I think it is also fair to consider that the problem might also be on Google’s end. Something similar happens on YouTube, because the content is sometimes loaded dynamically and the browser navigation is thereby circumvented.

You could check whether the DisableGoogleRedirects extension in Apple’s extension gallery makes any difference.

Switching to DuckDuckGo is something I encourage though. It respects user privacy far more and is not actually that bad anymore. I also find it very powerful with the !bangs, once you get used to them. For instance, you can always redirect a query to Google Search by typing ‘!g keywords’, or go to Google Translate by typing ‘!translate’.

 

[Nermal]

I wonder whether this is some sort of "caching" issue. I was just on "site A" and I then entered a new URL to open "site B". Just as B was loading, I noticed an interesting link on the still-visible site A. Site B popped up before I could react, so I clicked Back and ended up back on site A. I clicked the link on site A, and ended up back on site B, following a link that was in the same place on both sites.

I know that that's a bit hard to follow so I can post screenshots if it's too confusing!

 

[bzollinger]

I wonder whether this is some sort of "caching" issue. I was just on "site A" and I then entered a new URL to open "site B". Just as B was loading, I noticed an interesting link on the still-visible site A. Site B popped up before I could react, so I clicked Back and ended up back on site A. I clicked the link on site A, and ended up back on site B, following a link that was in the same place on both sites.

I know that that's a bit hard to follow so I can post screenshots if it's too confusing!

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're explaining. But after a few days I just switched my search engine back to google and now it's working properly!

So while I don't know how or why it now works, I'm happy that it does.

 

[cbns]

I have the same problem. Only with Google on safari. Super annoying

 

[MBAir2010]

I have the same problem. Only with Google on safari. Super annoying

reset your safari cache, then restart safari.
this problem was annoying in 2015 as well as in 2021.

 

[MatiasUnified]

Yeah can confirm that the problem persists and is ANNOYING! Send help.