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Friday's most followed: Yell Group, Nostra Terra Oil & Gas, Rockhopper Exploration, Domino Printing

Published: 21:16 16 Sep 2011 AEST

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Despite a slew of oil and gas news that came out this morning, Yell Group (LON:YELL) was the most searched for UK company on Google Finance with investors digesting the details of the Yellow Pages publisher’s alliance with cloud computing company Netbiscuits.

Yell said yesterday that the tie up with Netbiscuits will enable small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) to offer their customers new mobile services “regardless of the platform or device they use”.

This is Yell Group’s third strategic partnership deal announced in the past three months. Back in July, the company revealed an alliance with Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT) to supply online marketing services to SMEs and another deal with Bazaarvoice, which specialises in social commerce.

Today’s news flow was otherwise dominated by oil and gas.

Small cap explorer Rockhopper Exploration (LON:RKH) also ranked high on the list of hottest Google searches this morning thanks to investors’ interest in its closely followed drilling campaign in the Falklands.

The company provided the latest update from the Falklands campaign on Wednesday, announcing that its latest appraisal drilling well on the Sea Lion discovery was successful.

The 14/07 appraisal well, which was spudded on August 22, came in at the upper end of expectations, Rockhopper said.

The well, which was drilled close to the northern edge of the Sea Lion fan system, encountered 25 metres of net oil pay in the wells main target – the Sea Lion Main Fan Complex.

Despite the positive news, Rockhopper’s share price has dropped from Tuesday’s close of 246 pence to 216 pence.

Meanwhile, today’s well updates from Rockhopper’s sector peers Aminex (LON:AEX) and Aurelian Oil & Gas (LON:AUL) became the most read RNS announcements this morning.

Aurelian told investors initial result of flow testing indicated that the gas recovery from the Trzek-3 appraisal well in Poland is lower than anticipated and could be between 4billion cubic feet (bcf) to 8 bcf rather than the 16 bcf to 20 bcf that the company was expecting.

In its update from the Nyuni-2 well in Tanzania, fellow small cap oil and gas firm Aminex said it has decided to pull back to a depth of around 3,000 metres due to a blockage in the well and will now drill a side track to bypass the obstruction.

Preparations for the side-track will take several days, after which the company will restart drilling.

Other stocks that generated interest today included printing company Domino Printing (LON:DNO), which said its results in the first ten months of the financial year were in line with expectations as sales were 4 percent ahead of the results for the same period last year.

At the half year sales growth was 8 percent, while in the following four months to the end of August were down 1 percent from a year earlier.

Back to oil and gas, explorer Nostra Terra Oil & Gas (LON:NTOG) became the most discussed company on bulletin boards as posters speculated that the company is about to make a major acquisition.

Shares in Nostra Terra surged 13.5 percent to 0.64 pence on the speculation this morning.

Investors are also waiting for updates Verde prospect in south-eastern Colorado, where Nostra Terra has recently drilled the initial well. It confirmed that indications of productivity in drilling samples and electric logs were positive and the well has been recommended for completion.

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