I run a website www.dwldoppler.com. We are one of only three companies
in the US that manufacture and market this type of product so high
placement is important. At one point I was number 9 which was the
highest of all the manufacturers so I was very happy. Now it appears
that I have been dropped totally and a search on "transcranial
doppler" does not show DWL, my company. I used to have a high rating
on MSN and AOL but now AOL has been "enhanced" by Google I am off
their listings as well. In order to appear anywhere in Google I have
had to advertise and although that works and is actually a good deal,
I would much rather have a great page ranking.  For $15 I will accept
a "well maybe try this possibly" kind of answer. For a "you have
commited the following sins so do a) then b) then c) and you will be
fixed" I offer a further $15 tip

Hello dpg-ga,

  First, as a disclaimer, Google Answers
  Researchers do not have inside knowledge
  about how Google's ranking technology
  works.  We can only make educated guesses
  using infomration from pages like this:

://www.google.com/webmasters/  

  With that said, I'll tell you what I think
  you could do to improve your site.

  The first thing I checked was searching for
  "link: www.dwldoppler.com" on Google, and 
  there are no results.  That means that Google
  does not index any pages that link to your page.
  A description of this "link:" search is here:

://www.google.com/help/features.html#link

  Looking at your webpage's source code, I see
  that you have a large number of keywords in
  your meta-tag.  I also see a substantial amount
  of JavaScript.  I think that Google's ranking
  technology primarily relies on human-readable
  text because other text is too frequently used
  to trick search engines.  My belief is supported
  by the writing here:

://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#usedtobe

  and here:

http://www.sevendesignavenue.com/setips13.htm

  Also, I looked at what Google returned as the
  top result when I searched for "transcranial doppler,"

http://www.neuro.mcg.edu/cvhp/tcd.html

  That page uses no keyword meta tags, JavaScript, etc.
  It is nearly all straight text discussing transcranial
  doppler.

  I would suggest the following to get your 
  site listed again:

    1) Try to have some other sites link to your site,
    2) Put links from your site to other sites,
    3) Remove anything that might appear like it is
       aiming to artificially prop up your rating with
       search engines.  This includes the keyword meta tag.
    4) Pull out the Javascript into a separate ".js" file
       that is loaded in separately by the webbrowser.

  I think that taking those four actions will put you
  back in Google's index.
  
                      dogbite-ga

Thank you dogbite for your answer and aceresearcher for your very
knowledgeable comments. You are right I did remove a flash intro two
weeks ago to see what might happen. I have all the information I need
and I got it in just a few hours. Sadly there seems to be no way to
tip a commentator so dogbite gets it all. Best regards to both of you 
DGP

Greetings, dgp!

Normally, I have pretty good luck determining why a website's Google
Search Results have dropped. In your case, it does not seem to be so
clear-cut.

However, I did notice the following:

According to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, as of June 13,
2002, your website looked like this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020613203007/http://www.dwldoppler.com/

The last time Google created a cached version of your page, it looked
like this:
http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldoppler.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

You can use a Comet Web Search ( http://search.cometsystems.com ) to
find out the date that Google cached that page:

"The page you see is not a LIVE page of 
http://www.dwldoppler.com/ezfront.pdf
It is an archived copy dated Mar 20, 2003.
Click here to go to the live site. 
http://search.cometsystems.com/search.php?qry=www.dwldoppler.com&gg_ca=yr_kTbxbQOsC:www.dwldoppler.com%2Fezfront.pdf&origin=unknown
"

And the front page of your website now looks like this:
http://www.dwldoppler.com

So sometime between March 20 and today, you changed the front page of
your website from a Flash portal to a real main page. This is good.
The Googlebot likes sites much better when they don't contain Flash
entry portals.

You don't say when your Search Results dropped, but I'm guessing that
the new version of your page is what the Googlebot saw when it started
its "Dance" on April 11.

I ran your new site through the SearchEngineWorld Spider Simulator
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi

and it seems clear that the cause of your problem is the fact that the
Googlebot no longer thinks that there is any text on your front page,
and precious few links to other parts of your website as well:
--------------------------------------------
Spider title          Transcranial Doppler (TCD) from DWL 

Spider meta desc      Transcranial Doppler Systems from DWL in
America. Transcranial Doppler at the speed of sound

Spider meta keywords  Transcranial Doppler, tcd, DWL, ez dop,
vasospasm, mca, monitoring, doppler, multidop, mdt, mdx, mdx4, mdp,
emboli, embolus, emboli detection, embolus detection, transcranial
doppler

Spider Text 
books contact1 embodop probes1 
--------------------------------------------
Spidered Links 
 = spider this link with current settings. 
 = keyword density analyze this link. 
Link 
    http://books.jpg/ 
    http://contact1.html/ 
    http://embodop.html/ 
    http://probes1.html/ 


By contrast, look at all the text and links that were on your front
page as of March 20:
--------------------------------------------
Spider title Transcranial Doppler (TCD) from DWL Systems 

Spider meta desc Transcranial Doppler Systems from DWL in America 

Spider meta keywords Transcranial Doppler, DWL, DWL Systems, DWL
Doppler, ez dop, vasospasm, mca, monitoring, multidop, tcd, embolus,
emboli detection, embolus detection, transcranial

Spider Text 

This is G o o g l e 's cache of http://www.dwldoppler.com/ . G o o g l
e 's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the
web. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the
current page without highlighting. To link to or bookmark this page,
use the following url:
://www.google.com/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldoppler.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible
for its content.

Transcranial Doppler from DWL Systems transcranial doppler
Transcranial Doppler from DWL Systems in the U.S. Our focus is not
only to provide the finest Transcranial Doppler systems available but
also the best after sales support possible. We are professional people
who will never take you for granted. Our team sparkles with enthusiasm
for Transcranial Doppler and we will never lose sight of the fact that
you are the reason we exist. You can expect from us a unique blend of
art, science and experience. So when you buy your Transcranial Doppler
you think of us as ,"Nice people to do business with"If you do not see
exactly the Transcranial Doppler you need, please call or email us.
home ezdop1 ezdop2 mdp1 mdx1 mdt1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spidered Links 
 = spider this link with current settings. 
 = keyword density analyze this link. 
Link 
    ://www.google.com/help/features.html 
    http://www.dwldoppler.com/ 
    http://www.dwldoppler.com/ 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/home.html 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/ezdop1.html 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/ezdop2.html 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/mdp1.html 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/mdx1.html 
    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:SVlETGFtHvsC:www.dwldo
ppler.com/mdt1.html 
--------------------------------------------

If you right-click on your current page and select "View Source", you
can see that there is a LOT of javascripting as well as 3 Flash
objects embedded before your text and 2 more Flash objects embedded
after that.

The Googlebot frequently has problems spidering a site properly
because of heavy usage of javascript and Flash, and I would lay long
odds that the Googlebot is not recognizing any of your text because of
all the javascript and Flash objects it has to wade through to try to
find the text.

(Not to mention that all of these things will make your site
**extremely** slow to load for people using dial-up modems!)

There are lots of other things you can do to help your web page
positioning in Google Search Results, but your main solution would be
to re-vamp your page so that the javascript and Flash aren't causing
you these problems.

I hope that this information provided some enlightenment for you, as
well as assistance in straightening out your Google Search Results
positioning.

Best wishes!

aceresearcher

By the way, your <meta> description and keywords are just fine, and
since some Search Engines still use these for indexing purposes, I
seriously recommend that you NOT remove them. The Googlebot will
**NOT** penalize your website for its <meta> description and keywords.

Regards,

ace