Pat, I put "authority" in quotes to indicate that it isn't an absolute concept, it's a kind of 'guess' term, to indicate something that a lot of SE guys think is probably happening with google positioning.
However, it's an older SEO concept, and is probably fairly accurate. There's an even older concept of the "hub" site that the more modern "authority" concept is based on.
There's no hard and fast definition, tho. Basically, an authority site has a lot of links pointing to it, has many pages of content, and updates often.
What really defines an authority site is that it ranks well. ;-} (because lots of sites have lots of links, many pages, and update, but for some reason google doesn't give them the "authortity" positions.)
For adult, authority probably starts at 5 to 10 thousand backlinks, depending on a lot of factors.
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