Google’s John Mueller confirmed in a Google+ hangout last Tuesday that Google does use site wide or site authority to determine where new pages that have no page specific signals should rank in search.

John said this at the 4:49 mark into the video:

Here is the video embed:

To many this is not new, but always nice to have Google say it on the record.

Hat tip to +GlennGabe for spotting this.

Forum discussion at Google+.