How Google.com Works (Continued…)

When in doubt, get it from the horse’s mouth.  That is to say, Google has a wealth of information on how their process works on their own site:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897&topic=2370570&ctx=topic

Not all of the ingredients of the secret sauce is spelled out per say, but it definitely will give you a good understanding of all the moving parts.