Related Posts/Products - SEO Helpful?

[kettlewell]

I've been thinking about relations the last couple of hours, like how one object relates to another -

and it occurred to me that some of the plugins for wordpress and e-comm sites allow a listing of related products or posts...

It seems to me that as the search engines are getting smarter, that these sort of plugins would be *extremely* beneficial by creating pages that are deeply themed and provide positive LSI results.

Is this a common conception that I've been unaware of?

Does anyone else use this as a regular SEO practice?

or am I way out in left-field sipping on some rusty egg-nog?

Matt