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Google starts prefetching top search results for Mozilla and Firefox browsers

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Friday, April 1, 2005 Google engineer Reza Behforooz announced in a Google blog entry on March 30 that search engine Google has enabled "link prefetching" for some of their search results. The link prefetching has not been standardized, but it can enable faster page loading of Google search results in Mozilla and Firefox browsers that have the feature enabled.

When Google determines a user has a high likelihood of clicking on a search result, Google inserts a tag into the results they send out in response to a search. Some browsers can then preload that page, so in the event the user does select the page, it loads very quickly.

For example, a Google search for "wikipedia" today by Pingswept yielded an HTML page with this code included: 

<link rel="prefetch" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">

While not a formal benchmark, in casual testing by Pingswept, Firefox 1.0.2 loaded the Wikipedia main page in about half the time when the page had been link prefetched, as opposed to when it had not been. The load times were approximately 1.5 seconds and 3 seconds respectively. Internet Explorer 6.0 loaded the same page in slightly less than 3 seconds.

Users who want to disable prefetching in Firefox can do the following:

  1. Type "about:config" in the address bar.
  2. Scroll down to the setting "network.prefetch-next".
  3. Right-click on the value and click "Toggle".

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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
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