I see the difference and replicated it also - and it’s talked about in this thread Rules that use "This Attendee's X's Y" can't grant search access right now - #11 by eric.schwantler
The workaround would be store CoLink directly on the Site. ie
Site.Colink = User.Colink
rather than
Site.Creator.Colink = User.Colink
Seems like it’s a “feature request”