Google has historically been criticized for being a black box. But for the past couple of years the company has been trying to be more transparent in key areas (Matt Cutts in particular has been very helpful here). As the latest in a series of such posts, Amit Singhal, who runs the Google “ranking” team in search quality, discusses the “philosophies” behind Google ranking.

Here are the core principles according to Singhal:

1) Best locally relevant results served globally. 2) Keep it simple. 3) No manual intervention.

He goes on to elaborate. There’s not a ton of practical or tactical information in the post, however. Along those lines he points to specific quality guidelines for specific advice to webmasters.

Singhal promises a subsequent post in which he “will discuss in detail the technologies behind our ranking and show examples of several state-of-the-art ranking techniques in action.”

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Google: Web Search

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling