I took a trip to Game On, here in Dublin and I have to say I was really impressed.

I grew up in arcades and was a complete console junkie as a child, so this was paradise for me.

Game on Dublin – What to Expect

If you have kids they will love this so don’t think this is just for adults.

The event is filled with a good representation of nearly every console from ultra retro wooden box contraptions all the way to a super sleek 4 player Halo Reach set-up.

There are a host of actual arcade machines and some really rare consoles and handhelds.

I was also very impressed with the old rare consoles; some Japanese NES and pre NES Nintendo systems, which looked like they fell from space.

The Learning Bit

There seemed to be a load of info on the walls, but as I walked around I only had eyes for the games.

That said I am sure there is plenty to learn there as well and there were some pretty cool stalls.

I did notice a small Grand Theft Auto exhibit, featuring a lot of the old and new artwork from this epic series.

Check out the GTA baseball bat, very cool.

The Price

€10 for an hour and €20 for 3, if you go on your own head for the hour, with a group you might need the 3.

They do family ticket prices and the whole thing is really cheap for what you get.

My Favourites

The huge Pac Man wall was just epic! A 30 foot Pac Man, what more can I say, it is what it is.

There is also a vintage Star Wars arcade machine and some crazy Mechwarriors machine.

These 2 were serious trips down memory lane for me and show some serious artistry from a game development and from a user experience point of view.

These games are timeless and the graphics actually stand the test of time decades on, I was surprised how insanely addictive these old games were, bring back arcades!

Check out the Game On Dublin website

A little of our own Dropp brand of unashamed publicity, another client with an SEO requirement and a new client of Dropp’s; Byrne’s Cash & Carry.

Byrne’s are a Cash & Carry based in North Dublin wholesaling Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Nestle, Wrigley’s, Players, P.J. Carroll, King, Volvic, Tayto and many other household name brands.

#1 on Google for Cash & Carry

Cash & Carry is big business in Dublin and the search rankings reflect this, we are tasked with SEM and SEO for the company and the results are already page 1 on Google, within a few days.

Watch this space for more on the Byrne’s Cash & Carry project as it progresses.

We blogged a few days back about an age old problem in SEO terms;

When I Google my business name I don’t see my web site…

Sandyford Meats a Case Study

Sandyford Meats came to dropp with a very simple request, get us indexed #1 on Google for our business name; Sandyford Meats and that is exactly what we did.

Organic vs Paid, what we Recommend

Sandyford Meats is a prime example of a site, built and hidden, which although seemingly contradictory is common place for a lot of Irish SMEs.

The most effective solution to this issue is to operate a short term Google Adwords campaign, while optimising the Organic or Natural listings to index for the key term.

I could go on and on about this, but sufficed to say it works, we are Page 1 for the term now and #1 paid, in the next week there will be no need for the paid listing and the site will retain the top spot for the term Sandyford Meats at zero cost.

Check out the current Google listing on www.google.ie

Dropp acquired a new client this week in Drohan Lettings, a Dublin Letting Agent. Drohan’s site was in need of a rescue after being the victim of some nasty malware.

The project was a total online re-brand, to coincide with a new logo design supplied by the guys at printrun.ie

Daft Integration

The site is fully synced with the Drohan Lettings Daft.ie profile and is built with WordPress, allowing Drohan staff update any of the sites content.

The link with Daft.ie, keeps the site updated and dynamic allowing posting recent properties and full listings automatically.

Dropp are working with Drohan Lettings on an ongoing basis to train staff on reporting and updating of their new site.

Check out the site at www.drohanlettings.ie

We are just putting the finishing touches to one of our recent projects www.byrnes.ie, check out the project case study to find out more about the project or visit the site at www.byrnes.ie.

Dropp will be working with Byrne’s in the future to increase the websites potential and exploring a self advertising model allowing Byrne’s to promote supplier specials and offers, watch this space.

A simple request that I get asked about a lot; How do I remove a listing from Google’s index?

From time to time you may find references on Google’s Search index to yourself, your site, your business or a  brand you manage.

This could be on your own site or on a third party site, today we will deal with the third party scenario.

When requesting removal from a search engine it is always advisable to contact the third party and request they remove from their end first, this will speed up the process.

Once this is done you can head on over to the Google Webmasters Removal Tool;

1. Click New Removal Request
2. Enter the URL
3. Select Content has already been removed
4. Submit

Within 24-48 hours the index should be gone check out this handy tool at Google Webmasters Removal Tool

Answer this question, if the answer is no then you are need of Dropp’s services;

Is my site indexed on Google for my brand name?

Many clients come to us with this problem and Sandyford Meats were no exception.

The Sandyford Meats site is an excellent example of a site which has the potential to be #1 for its key term; ‘Sandyford Meats‘, unfortunately it is not.

I will be starting the clock as soon as this blog post goes out (11am GMT) and I am confident we will be #1 this week, optimistically today, more realistically middle of this week, we are all in the hands of our Google lords for this.

Check out the site at www.sandyfordmeats.ie

Dropp are pleased to announce that we have been nominated in the eCommerce category for the 2010 Irish Web Awards for a recent site www.vuvuzela.ie.

It came as a welcome surprise and we are chuffed to say the least.

You can check out the full list of nominees for the Irish Web Awards at;

http://webawards.ie/2010-nominated-list/

More About vuvuzela.ie

Find out more about this project and how we brought the noise to Ireland;

http://www.darraghverschoyle.com/vuvuzela-ie/

A client came to us recently with a problem that I see more and more, there web site had developed some of the nasty spyware.

Normally you would associate spyware, malware, root kits and all the other little internet annoyances with an unprotected home PC.

Spyware can find its way on to web servers very easily and here it can be very problematic causing untold damage to your online reputation and Search Engine Rankings.

When this happens the user is not allowed access to your site and they are presented with this not so friendly warning in its place.

Well enough about the bad news, lets get down to the fix:

1. Head on over to the Google Web Master site and verify you are the owner of the site, they will let you know what type of attack has been performed on your site.
2. Do not download your web sites files, you will more than likely contract the virus if you do.
3. If you need to get a copy of your web site you can do so by visiting the Internet Archive and type in your url.
4. From here you can copy and paste all the source code you need and get the contents of your files without downloading them, if you content is dynamically generated, this option will not work.
5. Delete all files from your web server and add a single holding page; index.html or index.php.
6. Last but not least head back to the Google Web Master web site and you will be able to contact google to let them know the attack is gone.
7. It may also be a good idea to increase the crawl rate of your site, to get google interested again, higher PR sites will not need this.

Typical times for this range from 24-48 hours, we were pleased to have this issue solved for our client in less than 12 hours.

If you have experienced this issue contact niall@dropp.ie and we can get you back in google’s good books in no time.

Getting your website ranked well on Google is the single most important thing you can do for you online marketing so, when Google makes changes to the way that the index websites we must all take stock of what those changes mean for our Search Engine Optimisation. Recently Google announced an update their search index called “The Caffeine Update“. So what does that mean to Web Developers, Search Engine Optimisers, Bloggers and Website Owners alike? Why have Google changed their ways?

It would appear that the main motivation for Google is to speed up the way that they index information. The goal of this is to make search more relevant in an era where Twitter and Facebook are making information flow faster than every before. Google hope to be able to index information as soon as possible making it available to users of their search service. Google explains it like this:

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

The old Google index had several layers for search indexing, each of which is refreshed at different rates. News sites as an example would be indexed faster as this information needs to be as current as possible however the products page on your new website may take longer to get into the indexes.

This means that search rankings may be less static than before acting in a far more reactive way to what is current. Good articles and content will still be ranked well. What it does mean however is that the indexes will fluctuate more often.

Another thing which Google have spoken about before which it appears will become more important than ever with Caffeine is mark up code compliance and page load speeds. This may finally see web designers adhere to the W3C standards that we have always seen as important in building sites. We have always felt that coding within standards leads to faster page load times as the browser has less work to do. Speed and page loading times it appears will become a much bigger factor in how your website is ranked. This might also lead to a greater importance on reliable, high performance web hosting having far greater importance than ever before.

We will of course be closely monitoring how these changes will effect the way that we optimise our clients sites.