OK, this is a multi-faceted concept and I need to emphasize
it’s not
an exact science. But here is what I have learned in my analysis at Top
Linking Secrets:

Authority – basics

The more authority your web pages have the better you will
rank on Google.
Authority means
that people trust you and your information. The great news is that
authorities trusted by people are also recognized as trustworthy by
Google. A good illustration is the .edu and .gov suffixes. These
suffixes imply they are credible sources of information and
it’s a
proven fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks
from these web addresses to your web pages will contribute authority to
your web pages. Another good example is Wikipedia as the contents here
are mostly contributed to by group of humans as opposed to a single
marketer.

So it follows that authority is significantly influenced by
the
source of your backlinks and if authoritative web pages link to you
then you receive their influence and in the eyes of Google you become
more authoritative and hence the trust in your site by Google goes up.

How Google pronounces what is and isn’t
authoritative is
confidential for good reason and falls in line with Google’s
thinking
of “Do no evil”. The last thing the Internet needs
is an individual or
a group exploiting the formula that Google utilizes in its efforts to
try and regulate probably the most significant technological
development of our times.

How not to get Backlinks

And on this thought it’s worth my while stating some
‘black hat
sources and practices of acquiring backlinks that Google not only
dislikes but appears to be acting to ‘classify’ as
negative
authorities. In no particular order of severity, the prime offenders
are:

Paid backlinks – places where
individuals buy and sell backlinks

Comment spam – entries that have links on
blog pages that are just not related to the main theme.

Low quality and *duplicate content –
‘scraped’ or copied

Unnatural growth – there are plenty of
ways that this is
achievable, Google isn’t dumb. Any sudden increase in the
number of
backlinks is going to show up on Google’s radar, specifically
if it’s a
recently registered domain.

Backlinks from bad reputation web pages –
these are particularly nasty as you are guilty by association – need I
say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on shaky ground, but key media
portals seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely discovered
significant quantities of the same article over and over again on
different portals with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only
as some of the results I am seeing go against the normal behaviors I
normally expect to see. More on this is in a future post….