If like us you are running third-party web filtering such as GoGuardian or Smoothwall Cloud Filter – you may see an uptick in Google Searches being blocked.

In Google Chrome version 134, we are seeing a new feature turned on called Network Prediction;

“Google Chrome’s network prediction feature aims to improve page load speeds by prefetching data for websites you’re likely to visit. This includes DNS prefetching, TCP and SSL preconnection, and prerendering of web pages. While this can speed up browsing, it might also lead to connections to websites you don’t intend to visit.“

An example of this is that you may block Reddit. Then someone might be searching for ‘how to …‘ and one of the top two search results points to Reddit. Network Prediction can pre-fetch Reddit, causing a blocked splash screen or access denied, even though that person hasn’t actively clicked on the Reddit link.