Page Authority is often correlated with rankings because pages that earn strong links and trust signals tend to perform better, but it’s not a direct Google metric and it doesn’t “cause” rankings by itself, so the relationship is imperfect. Yes—pages with lower Page Authority can absolutely outrank higher-PA pages when they match search intent better, answer the query more clearly, load faster, or have stronger topical relevance. For better accuracy, SEO teams should analyze keyword intent alignment, content quality and depth, on-page optimization (titles, headings, entities), internal linking strength, backlink relevance (not just volume), Core Web Vitals, crawl/index status, and SERP features because real rankings are driven by a combined set of relevance, usability, and trust factors.