Webmasters can use the <!– google_ad_section_start–>, <!– google_ad_section_end–> tags to provide Adsense Bots an hint about content that is more relevant for Google Ads.

Do they have similar tags for providing hints to the regular Googlebot ?

Some people think that the googleon and googleoff tags serve a similar purpose and could be used for the purpose of SEO - well that’s correct but they are for the Google Search Appliance and not the public Google web search.

From the GSA Search Crawl Policy:

The Google Search Appliance supports “googleon” and “googleoff” tags, special proprietary HTML tags that can be embedded in the HTML of crawled documents to prevent searching of text between these special tags.

The googleoff/googleon tags disable the indexing of a part of a web page. The result is that those pages do not appear in search results when users search for the tagged word or phrase. For example, some customers use googleoff/googleon tags to comment out a navigation bar in static HTML pages.

You can use googleon/off to tell the Google Search Appliance to ignore portions of a page. Insert <!–googleoff: index–> at the point you want the Google Search Appliance to stop indexing, then insert <!–googleon: index–> where you want it to resume indexing the page.

GoogleOn and GoogleOff tags (which may see live on adobe.com) will be ignored by regular Google spiders or other search engines. They make sense only when used in conjunction with Google Search Appliance or possibly, Google Mini.

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After Vodafone, another UK based mobile company, Virgin Mobile if forming a 50:50 JV with Tata TeleServices (TTSL). The JV will be more towards adding Value Added Services and handsets targeting youth, which comprises 50% of Indian mobile market, rather than owning the network.

This implies that Tata Indicom would be a mass market brand, while Virgin would become a premium brand. However, there may be a conflict of interest as Essar already has a partnership with Virgin for opening mobile shops ‘The Mobile Store’ throughout India.

We doubt whether Tata would be able to fully leverage on its partner strength, as it has more to do with a brand rather than actual improvement in product offering. Tata also needs to merge all its telecom subsidiaries to derive a proper valuation and then offer a stake to raise funds.

In the CDMA space, Tata Teleservices is a laggard as compared to Reliance Communications, but given Virgin’s expertise in CDMA space in USA and South Africa, it will definitely benefit from the JV and expand its ‘Indicom’ brand.

Tata may also have a long term goal plan as given Tata’s appetite to go global, these two companies may start their services in other countries too by acquiring stake of new operators or starting their own just as Airtel and Vodafone have done in Ireland.

Venture Itch adds that Tatas has a scattered and multiple telecom businesses depriving it of providing a bundled offering. Tatas already have a partnership with UK based Sky Corp for its DTH business and may want to use the media and telecom business in close sync. The article also adds that Tatas, instead of following the trend of outsourcing network services has decided to do the same on its own.

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Keotag is a convenient way to search for stuff (not just tags) across all popular blog search engines and social websites including Twitter, Digg, delicious, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

You type a search term (or tag) and click the corresponding search engine icon where you want to perform that search. Keotag is AJAX based and so you can switch search engines without having to reload the page each time.

No options to sort or refine search results but still quite useful especially when ego-surfing. Tag Viewer is another competing site but I would prefer Keotag.

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Satyam Computer Services today announced strategic initiatives to strengthen its presence in South Africa. Currently, Satyam serves 6 of the largest firms in the country, employs over 120 technical resources at customer locations and has offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The company is banking on a sizeable number of contracts emanating from South Africa in the coming years and sees potential in providing IT solutions to the Banking & Financial, Energy & Utilities and Government sectors.

As part of its global strategy, the company has also recruited and trained 50 South African technical graduates in the last one year. The first batch of 20 has been successfully deployed in projects in South Africa. Essentially an employment and skilled enablement program supporting the RSA’s BEEC, the company plans to hire almost 200 more local technical graduates, train them in India and bring them back to South Africa to associate with various customer projects.

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Ego-surfing or Googling your own name on the Internet has become a very popular activity on the web.

PEW says that around half of Internet users have googled for their own name on the web and this number has almost doubled in five years.

And its not just about self-googling, people look for contact information about old acquaintances with whom they have lost touch.

Self-searchers who locate information connected to their name online say that most of what they find is accurate. Only 4 percent of Internet users said embarrassing or inaccurate information online resulted in a bad experience.

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