What is a related search?
A related search is one of the suggestions in the block at the foot of a Google results page, usually eight of them, each a query that other people ran before or after the one you typed. Search for a brand film agency and the block might offer brand film examples, brand film cost, brand video production, and so on. Click one and you get a new results page with its own block, so the feature works as a ladder: each rung is a slightly different way of asking.
Google builds the suggestions from search logs and from its understanding of how queries relate, the same machinery behind autocomplete and People Also Ask. The difference is position and form: autocomplete guesses as you type, People Also Ask offers questions mid-page, related searches offer whole queries once you have scrolled past the results.
Why it matters
Why related searches matter
They are keyword research that Google gives away. Each suggestion is a real query with enough volume and enough connection to the original to be worth showing, which makes the block a quick map of how a subject is actually searched: the modifiers people add, the comparisons they make, the adjacent things they want. For a brand deciding what to publish, or how to phrase a page, that map is more honest than a brainstorm.
They also show how Google reads the topic. If every related search for a term is about price, Google believes the term is commercial, and a page that ranks for it needs to address cost.
In practice
How related searches work in practice
- 01
Start with the term a page or a campaign is built around. Search it, scroll to the bottom, record the suggestions. Click the most relevant ones and record theirs. Three levels deep usually produces thirty to fifty queries, which group naturally into a few intents: definitions, comparisons, costs, examples, how-to. Repeat in a private window and on a phone, because the suggestions vary with location and history.
- 02
Then use them. Suggestions that match the page's subject become headings, FAQ questions and secondary keywords. Suggestions that are a different subject become candidates for their own pages. Suggestions that reveal a misunderstanding of the brand or the category are a creative brief in themselves. Tools can pull related searches at scale, but the manual version takes twenty minutes and shows the whole pattern.
Watch out
What people get wrong about related searches
Treating the list as fixed. It changes with time, location, device and what the searcher did just before, and a suggestion seen once is a lead, not a fact. Check the volume in a keyword tool before building a page around it.
The other mistake is stuffing every suggestion into one page. The block often mixes several intents, and a page that tries to answer all of them answers none well. Sort by intent first, then decide what belongs on the page and what deserves its own.
