We recently reported the launch of In.Com and how it will be one of the most visited Indian portals in the time to come, however Google begs to differ.

You don’t hear about bugs in Google often so enjoy the moment. Google hasn’t identified In.Com as a domain name, it takes "in.com" as a TLD or the extension to a domain name. e.g. tnerd.in.com. When we wrote about In.Com first on TNerd we quitely touched upon the issue of Google not indexing however we did not dwell into it much as it was not very clear then.

As few pages from In.Com have been indexed, the issue is much more visible. Searching for In.Com’s pages in Google index shows pages only from the sub-domains e.g. kinng.in.com/ - Sing is Kinng Contest site. Though it is a subdomain Google indexed it identifying it as main domain.

If this bug is not fixed Google will never index pages under in.com but the chances are that these pages will be indexed under www.in.com as it treats www as a domain.

In.Com should escalate this bug to Google through Google webmaster central and this should be taken care off.

[Update: 12th Aug] Thanks for pointing that out John!

Almost a year ago I wrote about how Network18 group realized the potential of online presence and has been launching several sites ever since.

Network18 recently released IN.com. IN.com is a portal which has the formulae to success. It’s got everything right from Songs, Videos, and Games to Matrimony, E-mail, Travel, etc.

It gets even better, as the portal states, in.com is a gateway to the web; it is a collection of information from 16,000 websites. Network18 not only knows what attracts the visitors in terms of content but it also figured out how to get good content without having to generate it on your own.

Site has really picked up since its launch. Alexa traffic rank of the site is around 11,000 and looking at the traffic trend, it will improve considerably  soon. For some reason I still don’t see any pages in Google index, this almost never happens.

I do expect to see more general sites being released by Network18 to capture the niche in the indian online community.

One of the sites owned by Network18 is BookMyShow. Its and online ticket booking system which started with movie tickets only but now it offers more, it offers tickets for concerts and theatre.

The only option to book tickets so far was on the internet. Now you can download a mobile application from http://m.bookmyshow.com and book movie tickets on mobile phone. I have used this application and I found it to be really simple and easy to use. I encountered a few server errors; I think they must have been because of the slow GPRS speed.

This application is worth a try and comes really handy when you want to book tickets on the fly.

Television 18 is known to be India’s premier business and consumer news broadcaster with over 100% component annual growth rate and as I can see and tell based on my observation that the growth rate will not slow down for at least next 5 years or more.

The chances are that I am totally disconnected from the off-line world but I also believe that what happens on internet is a reflection of the society itself (Point I am trying to make is even if I spend most of my time on internet I know what’s happening out there). Lately I have noticed the “18” logo on lot of utility sites. These sites can be of any purpose from booking airline tickets to movie tickets or from buying products to just comparing their features and prices.

India’s growing economy is boosting the use of internet and its service or to some extent other way round as well. We have seen the same trend in the West when people were getting comfortable with the idea of trading on-line. It’s India’s turn now and TV18 is capitalizing the opportunity and is doing the right thing at the right time. 

Following are few of the sites which are either part of TV18 network or TV18 is one of the investors.

• Moneycontrol.com (Business)
• IBNlive.com (News)
• Jobstreet.com (Jobs)
• Yatra.com (Travel)
• Commoditiescontrol.com (Business)
• Cricketnext.com (Sports)
• Poweryourtrade.com (Business)
• Compareindia.com (Retail)
• Indiwo.com (Community based)
• Homeshop18.com (Retail)
• Tech2.com (Technology)
• Bookmyshow.com (Movie Tickets)

TV18 is all set to make “18” logo a part of our lives by aggressively promoting their brand on Television and on partner sites on the internet. They will certainly become a household name by associating themselves with general services on and off-line.

If at all there is a rival network to TV18, you need to act now, before it’s too late. Actually its never too late but riding the current and biggest internet and e-com wave will make all the difference.