Google's search ranking philosophy has three main elements, Google's Amit Singhal explains in a blog post : 1. Algorithmically-generated results. 2. No query left behind. 3. Keep it simple. Algorithmic means that Google would rather optimize with software than manual work, which scales better. No query left behind means that once you find a bad result, it's worth optimizing it because you might be catching a whole class of errors at the same time.