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Spider
11-01-2010, 01:59 PM
A long time ago, there was such a thing as MS Smart Tags. I think they still exist but can only see reference to them in MS Word and MS Office literature, and maybe older version, at that. Have they been abandoned, do you think?

When they came out, we were advised to put the code --


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

... in the headers of every webpage we created to prevent these Smart Tags doing whatever it was they were supposed to do.

I haven't heard mention of them for years but some of my webpages (many times updated from their originals) still contain this code. I have started removing it but not sure if that is wise.

Does anyone know what devilish trick MS had these Smart Tags doing, do they still do it, or can we now remove this code from our sites?

Harold Mansfield
11-01-2010, 02:53 PM
If by MS you mean Microsoft, as far as I know they don't really have any Search Engine use, they were merely an internal way to organize your MS docs.
They aren't the same as Search Engine tags.
I could be wrong on this, but a quick Google search only shows articles about them that are very old and reference Office XP.

billbenson
11-01-2010, 03:12 PM
I found it in a google search and its an obsolete add serving tag from what I read. I that eborg isn't familiar with it and I've never heard of it I suspect its best to remove it. See what others have to say here first.

Spider
11-02-2010, 08:32 AM
Thanks. I think we all found the same references. I'm going to assume they have been abandoned and will remove the code as I go along.

vangogh
11-02-2010, 12:23 PM
You can definitely remove them. They were likely placed there automatically by whatever software you were using at the time. I think for a very short time they may have had some use, but you've been able to safely remove them for years.

Spider
11-08-2010, 09:33 AM
Thank you.