Is this valid robots noindex?

blocking a section of a page

[annej]

I am trying out a site search engine and need to block my navigation from being indexed as it is skewing the results.

They suggest blocking the navigation with something like.

<!-- robots content="noindex" -->
navigation section
<!-- /robots -->

I hadn't realized you do this with just part of the page.

I am concerned that doing this could mess up my rankings with Google and other search engines. Would this be a problem?

[encyclo]

This syntax may be recognized by the particular search program you have installed, but it is certainly not recognized by Google or other search engines. It won't be a problem in terms of ranking.

[annej]

Thanks, I didn't think I'd ever heard of it before.

[a1call]

What would it take to have a new tag standardized. The need for partial exclusion is valid and many site search engines already have their own. Even mediabot has section targeting.