Systems and methods for application and network-based long poll request detection and cacheability assessment therefore are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a distributed proxy and cache system, including, determining relative timings between a first request initiated by the application, a response received responsive to the first request, and a second request initiated subsequent to the first request also by the application, and/or using the relative timings to determine whether requests generated by the application are long poll requests. The relative timings can be used to determine whether the second request is immediately or near-immediately re-requested after the response to the first request is received. The relative timings can also be compared to request-response timing characteristics for other applications to determine whether the requests of the application are long poll requests.