Smart tags are something Microsoft cooked up to sell the content on your site and steal your traffic without you even knowing it. After the great success they had winning the browser wars (A very important first step in controlling the web) they are now moving forward with the next step in dominating the web space. One of the great promises of the web was that it was going to be an even playing field. Well that is no longer the case.

Microsoft was able to run MSN from a loser to a winner by simply directing every browser to their site. If you only check your site using IE then you helped Microsoft turn MSN profitable. Where's your cut? They virtually killed Netscape. You say Netscape is still around, but I beg to differ. Netscape is now owned by AOL and you can only imagine what type of hidden agenda they have with their web browser. What is needed is an independent web browser. However, even if there was such a thing it could not displace IE. Why? Simply because people are lazy and uninformed. They would never think of spending time looking for any other browser.

So what's next? The so called Smart Tags. What they do is add hyper links to your site as the user views the page. Hyper links that you did not add. When someone clicks on the newly added link they are swooped away to the top bidder and never return to your site. So if you've been working hard for the past several years to build up your traffic then you've helped Microsoft generate a new stream of income.

What can you do? You have to add a new meta tag to each of your pages. Here is the new meta tag:

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

We now generate this tag as part of our META Tag Generator. We are hoping that this is the correct tag and that Microsoft won't change it later. Microsoft is putting out a lot of confusing press about Smart Tags just to keep us all guessing. They say that they have pulled Smart Tags, but from where and what capability and for how long? It seems they did take is out of the OS but kept it in OfficeXP.

If you find out more let us know and we'll do the same.