I’m using Safari 16.3 (17614.4.6.11.4, 17614) on macOS Monterey 12.6.3 (21G419) but this problem already persists since many years and Mac systems.

I don’t know which version it was but it suddenly started with a new version of macOS (or was it even still Mac OS X?) where they also renewed Safari some years ago.

Here’s what I’m talking about: Sometimes I go to Safari browser, open a new window and type some keyword in Safaris address bar. Since this isn’t a URL typing enter will initiate a Google search. The link in the address bar changes to something like this: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=hippopotamus&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Now, I click on any search result. This will open the page of the search result, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus

Now, I want to return to the Google search results page. To do this I click the browsers back button once. I expect to land on the Google search results page but instead of that I see the browsers home window, the window I saw before I startet the Google search.

If I click the forward button I get to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus again. If I click the back button again there’s still only Safaris home window. The Google search link https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=hippopotamus&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 is also not visible in the browser search history.

This only happens from time to time and I have no idea on what this depends.

Do you know that behavior? Is this a bug? Is there a way, maybe a setting, to fix it?