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Web Accelerator ate my account

Ades [PersonRank 6]

Friday, May 6, 2005
19 years ago

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/06/google_accelerator_i.html

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Doesn't Google's Web Accelerator only prefetch links with the rel="prefetch" tag parameter in the link? That's certainly what this page implies:

"So you should only specify prefetching for the links your users are most likely to click on."

From: http://webaccelerator.google.com/webmasterhelp.html

Surely only a foolish web app designer would specify this for a page that changes data using a GET.

Maybe someone who has the Web Accelerator installed and their own web server could do some tests...?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

This question is a good one. It's also raised at 37Signals, and David Heinemeier Hansson replies:

"Google follows all ahrefs (that isn’t on https), not just the link tag. The link tag is only there to make it smarter about that stuff."
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/google_web_accelerator_hey_not_so_fast_an_alert_for_web_app_designers.php

I will create a test-case for this and check what happens.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

I just created a quick test case but couldn't even get it to prefetch any pages when using the link tag! Maybe I was doing something wrong... I'll try again.

Also, does it have anything to do with the http cache-control headers of the page? Does "private" mean the same thing to Google Web Accelerator as it does to other proxy servers? Or does it just ignore it and cache the page anyway? I think there are too many unanswered questions...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

Tony, same here – I updated my post. My test-case could not reproduce *any* prefetching at all.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

19 years ago #

I wonder if we're already seeing bugfixes to the Accelerator being implemented after the reports...

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