levo - 5:22 pm on Feb 28, 2013 (gmt 0)

One mistake in the first post, Firefox prefetches rel=next, not Chrome. I've been using rel="next prerender"

or is it (as I read it) an automated chrome-only feature which ALWAYS happens if G returns mt website?

Since mid-2011, Chrome prerenders the first result in Google SERPs almost all the time. It creates a hit on your webserver and some other stats like Adsense.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

And if you have rel=prerender implemented for a series of pages, latest Chrome follows each prerender link in the background, creating hundreds of impressions.