I hope that someone would be able to help us with our Google placement.
We need to know what changes we need to implement in order to get listed higher.

We?ve been frustrated now for over a year trying to show up anywhere.
About 6 months ago, we hired a webmaster who made extensive changes to
the site, and still no success, although we did raise in other search
engines. Sigh.

Please note that the web site in question is of adult (though not
scandalous J ) nature. I asked and was told by Google moderators that
it?s ok to post here, as long as I skip the http://www. part of the
url.

Right now, the only way to find us in Google is to type the web
address directly, showing that we are indexed. When searching by
keywords (San Francisco escorts), we don?t show up anywhere in the
first 20 or so pages?

Site name is Lovings.com . The relevant keywords are (in order of
relevance): San Francisco escorts, massage, adult entertainment.

-We do not now nor have ever used the unethical means of search engine
promotion, so I doubt that we are being penalized for somesuch ? no
scripts, keyword spamming, hidden  text. The server is our own, and
not hosting other sites that may bring the house down in some way, if
that matters. We do use virtual domains on the same IP (just trying to
give as much info as possible?)

-The only other gateways to the web site are the three domains that
break down our content by subject ? blondelovings.com,
ebonylovings.com & asianlovings.com .

I run a couple of analyzers on the front page, and, except for a
somewhat low keyword percentage in text (how in the world could we add
more keywords while still making sense to human readers and not look
awful??), page seems fine.

The site is now php based ? I don?t know if that would affect
anything, but we had the same problem for a year, while we were
completely static, html based.

It seems that inside category pages are not being spidered ? though in
a frame, they are also linked from inside the <noframe> tags, and also
from the front page, in following format:
http://www.mydomainname.com/page.php?escorts
http://www.mydomainname.com/page.php?massage etc.

A couple of things I noticed are:
1)While Alexa lists about 270 links to our site, Google only lists 5,
and doesn?t include some of the most popular (according to Google &
Alexa) and relevant sites ? one of them is listed as 1,333th site on
the ?net by Alexa and 5/10 in Google (yes, we have text links back
from most of the sites, not banners, if that matters any more).

If I run a search in Google for sites that mention ours, I come up
with about 1,800 results ? and most of them contain links to our web
site. I?m confused.

2) We are listed in Google Directory, but inexplicably do not come up
in search of the main DMOZ directory, although we are listed there
under Top: Adult: Regional: North America: United States: California:
SF Bay Area: Business: Personal Services: Escorts and do come up if I
search that particular directory. Could this penalize us?

I would appreciate help- we have been pulling our hair out about this
for over a year? only the dog still has some, and he is getting mighty
nervous :-).

The Google Answers researcher guidelines strongly discourage
researchers from answering questions that relate to Google itself,
except with the information that you can find by clicking "About" on
the Google home page. I wish you luck in your project and just wanted
to explain what might otherwise seem a puzzling lack of response.

Dear webseamstress, 

Major Tom's comment is not exactly accurate. Many questions regarding
placement have been answered by myself and other colleagues in Google
Answers. Major Tom is welcomed to search for such answered questions
on the GA archive: <http://answers.google.com/answers/search?q=placement+site+google&qtype=all>
(and to visit the Researcher's forum).

Saying that, it is important to stress, that, according to the FAQ,
Google may remove questions that "seek specific information about
Google or Google Answers"; and that the Researchers are not Google
employees, nor they have any "inside information" other than their
expertise in the subject.

Thanks, your comments are appreciated and I'll settle in to wait.

However, I found this place while doing a search on Google
optimization, and since then have found many answered questions
relating to Google search optimization specifically (alas, didn't help
me :)  ).

I understand the Google policy, but the reality seems to give me a chance.

Of course, I'm aware that the people here are not Google employees -
Google just happened to have a niftiest place to find independent
consultant help, and from the other answers I gathered that the amount
of people here who are truly competent and thorough is remarcable.

That's the only reason I'm posting this question here, not in hopes
for "insider info". Frankly, from where I sit it doesn't seem like
there *is* such a thing with Google, any more than one can get true
insider info for Torah, Bible, Upanishades or weather forcast <g>.

Majortom - you may wish to become better familiar with Google Answers.
I would venture to say that one of the most, if not the most, type of
question answered on this site is "My site is not highly ranked by
Google... How do I improve this?"