It also completely hijacks the back button on iOS Safari for me. It’s impossible to leave the site by pressing back or swiping.
What I don’t understand is, what exactly are they trying to do? Is this just a bug, and it’s only supposed to hijack the back button once? I can see (reluctantly) how a single hijack might nudge users to stick around longer, but surely there’s no upside to infinite hijacking...?
It might be important for SEO:
It assesses the number of people who leave your page by hitting the back button to return to the search listing page. If Google sends 1,000 people to one of your web pages and each of those 1,000 people hit the back button within a few seconds, it tells Google your web page isn’t relevant.
Sounds plausible, though.