My first guess would be “authoritative” ranking ignores $$profit$$ when assembling results, that means counteracting effects of certain videos(viral, clickbaity, "hot" controversial topics, designed to rail you on/shock) being pushed in recommendations and forgets all the autoplayed "up next" clips, only counting organic conscious traffic (clicks in subscription, search tab and from external sources). TLDR it overlooks usual YT manipulation techniques designed to make you keep clicking/watching ads. I wish I as a user could manually trigger this hidden ranking on my search queries.