What I replied to your email...

I’ve managed to use Google’s tools and a dowloaded program to set it up so Google doesn’t spider the site. I do it, and send them the info. Even then, what they (or my own spider) sees, depends on what the script sends them. I’m in the process of making the site easier to index, and I can set it so email addresses are not sent when the site’s spidered. As for emails entered in the posts, I can try to modify that so they won’t be as recognizable as emails, but without doing it by hand, they’ll have to stay.

The main thing I’m focusing on is getting the site to register high up when the terms Congenital Adrenal and Hyperplaisa are searched for. There’s so much competition for keyword placement, it’s hard to get a high placement on most words, and I’ve managed to get the #1 place on all but Google.

The site has already been extensively spidered by Google, and when I searched for [my daughter’s name] I got one link to the domain name I got her for her birthday that redirects to our family page, amidst dozens of links to other [people with the same name]. When I google my own name, it’s not until the second page that the CAH board is linked.

The thing to remember about Google is that they prioritize the links in such a way that oldest pages will be much harder to find than newer material. something you wrote a year ago will very much be like a needle hidden in a haystack, even if it is indexed.

To elaborate, there are two aspects of what Google does. One is a tool to find things you’re looking for, but it is by no means an exhaustive search. Since so many new sites are created each day, older stuff is fairly hard to find unless there’s something very specific about it. On the other hand Google has become a business opportunity for those wanting to draw traffic to their site. For non-profit sites like this, we have to play the same game in order for people to be able to find us when looking for information. The main purpose of today’s redesign is to boost the Google PageRank of the main page. It won’t make the other pages that easier to find, but will figure in Google’s algorithm of site ranking when determining the placement of the main page.