<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

[larry12468]

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

I saw the above meta tag on a web site.

Does anyone know the purpose of this metatag?

Thanks,

Larry

[chasing something]

i don't know if they are still doing it, but microsoft at one time was spidering peoples pages. if they found a word that matched something they were selling, they'd add a link (on the persons site!) pointing to there sales page.

the tag is to prevent that:)

[PCInk]

It's similar to what you see in the modern versions of Word and Excel - when a date or address has a dotted underline and clicking the button that appears when you hover over it will allow you to find the address on a website or set an appointment in outlook.

The idea was to incorporate this idea into Internet Explorer but was met with webmaster opposition. So far, it has not happened.

Word and Excel use a simple verion. MS were going to sell words to companies and use these bought words as SmartTags with the dotted underline by directing traffic to the advertisers site.

This tag was to stop this from happening. It was out-out by the webmaster (at least you could opt out).

Some webmasters leave this tag in in case MS do decide to release this in future versions of their browsers. To have this tag or to miss it out makes no difference at the moment.