MS Search excludes sites with Smart Tag META?

[thewitt]

Can anyone confirm the following statement?

Microsoft has indeed provided a method for sites to opt-out of their Smart Tag features in IE by using the meta tag <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">, however an unwanted side effect of this tag is exclusion by the Microsoft web crawler used to populate ist MSN Search engine. This results in pages being left out of the popular search engine which is used by default by millions of web users when they click on the Search tab in IE

I found this to be too much, even for Microsoft. I'm not real sure how to verify this is true or not. Anyone else know for certain?

-t

[nflicanada]

I doubt that's true just because of the fact that MSN uses results from Direct Hit, Ink and LookSmart to power their searches.

As for testing about the only way I could think of is if you have a top ranking in DH, and adding the tag to see if your site is excluded.

[aspen]

whats the source of that?

[crashZ]

I too have a very hard time buying that. Esp considering all the bad publicity Smart Tags have already received, so bad that MS backed off on their initial release. Hmm, I thought it was being held for the next version of XP, not the ?Oct? release. It really does not make sense across the board.

[icehousedesigns]

Thats bogus. nflicanada hit the nail right on the head. If it is true, I would like to know how they would pull that off.

[moonman]

I can't clarify this as true or not, but I wouldn't put anything past MicroSoft. Bill Gates has a habit of getting his own way.