The Recommended label for this tab is a complete misnomer. The plugins listed as "Recommended" aren't actually being recommended at all. They are just supposedly installed on other sites running similar plugins.

But the math on that makes "supposedly" the operative word. I use a lot of plugins that don't have so many users on wordpress.org, so I doubt I'm served a list of showing what others using these same, niche plugins are currently also using. That might actually be quite interesting, but I doubt it's what I'm getting.

In fact, the Recommended tab on most of my sites just lists a ton of well-known plugins, most of which I've tried and really dislike.