1. A method for selective prefetch scanning in a web client/server communications system connecting a web client and a web server, the method comprising: scanning a first response at a prefetcher; identifying, in the first response, a reference to a first section of a container object, wherein the container object includes a set of uniform resource locators (URLs) and the reference to the first section of the container object identifies a subset of the set of URLs; scanning a second response comprising the container object and the reference by a container object scanner of the web/client server communication system; determining whether the reference substantially matches one of a collection of recently applied references stored in an applied reference store communicatively coupled with the container object scanner; and when the reference substantially matches one of the stored collection of recently applied references, adjusting a first prefetch decision for the subset of the set of URLs.