Google's related searches are not actual user searches?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I've started seeing new "related searches" suggestions at the bottom of serps that suggest, at least to me, that the suggestions listed are more like popular anchor text or product speak than actual human search terms.

example: view blue widget specs

Nobody has ever looked for the word "view" in the history of my sites search function but it's the first suggestion in Google. The rest of the suggestions contain the words "review" and/or "prices" when this really isn't a niche with a lot of shopping interest involved. Less than 5% of searches on my site have contained either of those two words.

On the flip side many words I KNOW are searched for do not appear as related searches at all. Am I just lucky in my niche or are others seeing similar suggestions?

[tedster]

Sounds like another semantic algorithm is in play, doesn't it?

[santapaws]

are you saying google should be trying to point the user at what it thinks the user is most tightly searching for? because thats clearly now how they now operate. I could see google pointing users to related terms that they would like/prefer the user to be searching for.

[Korrd]

For the past couple of months I've been seeing the unique text of one of my internal navigation links as a related search for a query I monitor. There haven't been any actual hits for the related query in my referrer stats though. But then ranking anything less than fifth on the monitored query yields next to no clicks these days. FYI my site currently ranks on the second page and has been on the rise recently, and ranks number three verbatim, if any of that offers a clue.