It is generally accepted that to rank well you need to be considered an authority site. And to become an authority site you need to get links from other authority sites. But is the term "authority site" correct, or is it more like PageRank where each page has it's own authority score. Most people seem to speak in terms of "authoritative domains" which would imply that any kink from such sites, not matter how deeply linked in the site, would pass-on authority. Can someone clarify how authority gets passed on. Thank you!
If that is google defination have you tried to do some search for that on the google web site. As far as I know they have quite big FAQ section there