Some queries want the newest answer and some want the best one. "How to boil an egg" has a correct answer that has not changed. "iPhone battery drain" means something different every time a new version ships.
Query deserves freshness is the name given to the second case. When a query shows an unusual spike in volume, in news coverage, or in new pages being published about it, search results tilt toward recent documents. Google's own explanation of ranking lists freshness as one of the factors it weighs differently depending on the query.
The practical consequence is that recency can outweigh accumulated authority on a time-sensitive topic. A two-day-old article on a site with modest links can outrank an established page that has not been touched in a year.
For editorial planning this decides publishing speed. Topics tied to releases, regulation changes, algorithm updates, or seasonal events reward being early and being updated. Evergreen topics reward depth instead, and chasing freshness there mostly produces churn. Publication and update dates should be accurate either way, because misleading dates are handled as a quality problem.