Why are you blocking my webpage which used to come up as #1?  Search =
"Bay Area Business Council"

www.cville.com/members/ridenour/babc.htm

Paul Ridenour

Hi, 

I think the answer to your question is here:
://www.google.com/technology/index.html

<excerpt>
The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages
developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford
University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve
every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide
the basis for all of our web search tools.

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote,
by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that
casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important"
weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

</excerpt>

This suggests your previous ranking was due to the number and
type/quality of other pages linking to your page.

I don't think it's a question of your page being blocked, but that
many other pages have also been published regarding this issue. So far
as I know Google doesn't block or modify results.

I think your message is getting out via these other pages as well as
yours, so that's a good thing.

Hope this helps.

I am satisfied with your answer.  However, I still question it because
when I search "Ridenour" at google.com, my webpage always comes up in
the top 10, out of 62,000+.  When I search "Paul Ridenour", my webpage
always comes up #1.  When I used to type "Bay Area Business Council"
(Even shortly after I created it), it always came up #1 - now it does
not come up at all.  It comes up #1 at altavista.com and lycos.com and
others, but does not come up at all on yahoo.com or google.com.  Maybe
it will the next time google does its crawl! Thanks!

Additional information is provided, as to how a site can be
temporarily dropped by Google, at:
://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html