My site, www.epcdo, used to have a page rank of four, and when I
googled the url or searched links:www.epcdo.ca it would return
information. Now my page rank is zero and Google says it has no
information when I search for links or the url. No cache even. I have
made no major changes to my site since my old page rank, although I
have added
information, and I have new links from high PR sites. What happened
and how can I fix it to improve my page rank from zero? I see other
sites with one link and very little content that have much higher
ranks, so what what am I doing wrong?

Greetings, peckster!

While your entry page at http://www.epcdo.ca is aesthetically
attractive, according to the Googlebot, this page has essentially no
*content*.

Content is a really big consideration for the Googlebot -- a great
deal of the importance factor (Page Rank) which Google assigns to a
website is based on the actual text content of primarily the home
page, and to a lesser extent, the subpages. The Googlebot can only
read **text**, not **pictures of words**.

Google Information for Webmasters - Webmaster Guidelines

"Try to use text instead of images to display important names,
content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained
in images."
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html


So this is *all* that the Googlebot sees when it crawls your site:

------------------------------------------------------------
Early Prostate Cancer Diagnosis Ontario

http://www.epcdo.ca/index.html
http://www.epcdo.ca/releases/EPCDO_launch_rel_071603.doc
------------------------------------------------------------

You've got all of that important information, but because it's printed
in a picture rather than listed as text, the Googlebot doesn't see any
of it.

I believe that you had a Page Rank of 4 because your organization is
so worthy that numerous important websites have linked to it. If you
rewrite your website to make your content text, I believe that you
will rise again in Google's search engine rankings.

Furthermore, if you continue to add meaningful content to your
website, I believe that it will only increase in importance in the
Googlebot's eyes.

I recommend that you change your "Launch Press Release" link to "More
Information" and change it from a Microsoft document to an html page
-- Microsoft Word takes awhile to load, and viewers may give up and go
away. What's more, not all of your viewers will have Word on their
computers, and you want them to be able to see your content even if
they don't have Word.

Then, perhaps you can include a subpage called "News Articles" which
contains a paragraph or two from each of several articles related to
PSA testing, with links to those articles.

Another thing you can do is include a link to a page entitled "Take
Action" with detailed information and instructions on how Canadians
can contact their legislators to request that they work to get PSA
testing covered.


Before rating this Answer, if you have questions about the information
that I have presented, please post a Request for Clarification, and I
will be glad to see what I can do for you.


Best Wishes!

aceresearcher

---

Request for Answer Clarification by peckster-ga on 14 Jul 2004 13:25 PDT

Sounds like good advice, but I'm still wondering why Google can't find
the site when I do a serach for the url or ask google what the linking
sites are. It finds nothing, not even a cache.

---

Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Jul 2004 13:35 PDT

<< I'm still wondering why Google can't find the site when I do a
serach for the url or ask google what the linking sites are. It finds
nothing, not even a cache. >>

Google recently made dramatic changes to their algorithm, and we are
seeing a lot of sites that were previously indexed disappear
completely from the index, for various reasons. The most likely reason
in the case of your site is that the Googlebot does not think that
there is anything on the site, and sees no reason to index it.

Regards,

aceresearcher

---

Request for Answer Clarification by peckster-ga on 14 Jul 2004 14:03 PDT

Thanks for that, I didn't understand what "indexing" means. Is there
any other way to check to see if my site is indexed?

---

Clarification of Answer by aceresearcher-ga on 14 Jul 2004 19:10 PDT

You can determine whether a site currently exists in Google's index by
inputting the URL into Google's Search text box. If it is indexed,
something like this will appear:

------------------------------------------------------------
Google
Web Images Groups News Froogle more ». Advanced Search Preferences Language
Tools. Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google ... 
Description: Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images.
Features include PageRank, caching and translation...
Category: Computers > Internet > Searching > Search Engines > Google

Google can show you the following information for this URL:

    Show Google's cache of www.google.com 
    Find web pages that are similar to www.google.com 
    Find web pages that link to www.google.com 
    Find web pages that contain the term "www.google.com"
------------------------------------------------------------
://www.google.com/search?q=www.google.com



If it is *not* indexed, something like the following will appear:

------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, no information is available for the URL www.epcdo.ca

If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the
following link: www.epcdo.ca

Find web pages that contain the term "www.epcdo.ca"
------------------------------------------------------------
://www.google.com/search?q=www.epcdo.ca

Regards,

aceresearcher

On the money, great followup. Thanks aceresearcher!

Thanks for the excellent rating and the tip! I'm glad that I could help you out!

Best Wishes,

ace