As I understand it, Technorati "authority" is simply the number of other blogs that have linked to a given blog within a certain amount of time (3 months?). My blogs all have 0 authority, but I see a lot that have hundreds. And the blogs don't seem anything special (some make me think, "Why in the world would anyone, much less 50 blogs, link to this?"). Is there some trickery being pulled by those bloggers to increase their authority? Yesterday, I got a link from a blog in my comments section. It was a spammy, automatic blog, but it was indeed a link so I approved it to see if my Technorati authority would increase by 1. It didn't. So what gives?
Technorati doesn't index comments, just the main posts. Most of the sites with links get them from link exchange posts for the sole purpose of boosting authority as that means more cash from TLA, PPP, etc. I gave up on following my Technorati authority a few months ago when I realised that genuine link building was losing out to gamers.
Does that mean Technorati only gives authority when a blog that has been registered with them links to mine in a post?
A blog doesn't have to be registered on Technorati to be counted towards your authority. As for caring about your Technorati authority score, I'd recommend dismissing it. There are so many problems with it that it is just not worth focusing on.
No, it doesn't. All blogs count. I have a blog with Technorati authority of around 400 (ranking around 10k). I suppose you could call it trickery on may part because a lot of the links come from WordPress themes I have sponsored.
Technorati authorities are counted for all linkbacks from other blogs to your site within the past six months. The system is definitely flawed, but unfortunately, it's just like Google's PR, it surrounds a lot of ways to get traffic, show the "importance" of your blog, etc. There are many ways people get authorities, people do link exchanges, meme's, comment on blogs that give a automatic linkback, etc.
I just checked into the same thing, since my authorities = 0 too. It just doesn't seem worth it to become involved in the trickery of link farms.
Try commenting on some blogs that have that plugin to give backlinks to their top commentators. A lot of blogs have those...