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wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “ai scraper”

wp.org orders by popularity, so a plugin a host bundled onto millions of sites, or a big-brand one that's slow and mediocre, can sit at the top. Our ranking is built to answer a different question: which of these is actually worth installing. How this works →

For “ai scraper”, we agree with wp.org on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 10 of the top 20. 2 plugins are pushed down for signals wp.org ignores: errors, a host-installed base, or removal risk.

wp.org search ranks on

Install count (uncapped), the raw star average, freshness, and support. Popularity dominates, so the biggest install base usually wins regardless of how it got there.

We add

A cap on the install boost, volume-weighted ratings, and signals wp.org can't see: whether it throws errors on current PHP, whether the install base is organic or host-pushed, and its risk of being pulled.

Ranked above its merit

AI Marketing Expert — AI Email Marketing, AI Content Generator, SEO Analyzer, AI Workflow Automation, Social Media & Ai Chatbot shows at wp.org #3 but places #12 on merit, a gap of 9 places. Its 2K+ installs carry it up the search order; its 5.0★ average from 1 reviews, plus freshness and upkeep, place it lower on our volume-weighted scale.

Buried gem

Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance places #7 on merit, 4.5★ from 102 reviews, but shows at wp.org #15. A smaller install base keeps it further down the default search order than its quality signals alone would.

merit plugin wp.org
1 Under Construction 600K+ · 4.8★ (1285) wp.org #1 2 301 Redirects – Redirect Manager 300K+ · 4.7★ (578) wp.org #2 3 WP Reset 300K+ · 4.8★ (1014) wp.org #5 2 too low 4 Minimal Coming Soon – Coming Soon Page 100K+ · 4.3★ (282) wp.org #7 3 too low 5 Simple Author Box 90K+ · 4.3★ (115) wp.org #4 1 too high 6 External Links – nofollow, noopener & new window 90K+ · 4.3★ (247) wp.org #9 3 too low 7 Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance 5K+ · 4.5★ (102) wp.org #15 8 too low 8 VigIA – AI Visibility, Analytics & Control 2K+ · 5.0★ (19) wp.org #10 2 too low 9 AxiaChat AI – Free AI Chatbot (Answers Customers Automatically) 500+ · 5.0★ (12) wp.org #8 1 too high 10 Known Agents – Track AI Bots and Crawlers, Block Scrapers, Analyze LLM Referral Traffic 1K+ · 4.8★ (6) wp.org #6 4 too high 11 Bot Traffic Shield – Block Bad Bots and Stop AI Bots Crawlers 800+ · 5.0★ (5) wp.org #13 2 too low 12 AI Marketing Expert — AI Email Marketing, AI Content Generator, SEO Analyzer, AI Workflow Automation, Social Media & Ai Chatbot 2K+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #3 9 too high 13 App for Cloudflare® 1K+ · 4.7★ (14) wp.org #19 6 too low 14 Trace My IP – Visitor IP Tracker, Stats Analytics & Page Views Counter with Email Alerts 1K+ · 4.5★ (21) wp.org #23 9 too low 15 AI Scrape Protect 400+ · 4.7★ (3) wp.org #11 4 too high 16 RankReady – AI SEO, Schema, llms.txt, AEO and GEO for ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity 500+ · 4.8★ (5) wp.org #12 4 too high 17 Tasty Recipes Lite – WordPress Recipe Card Plugin with Built-In Recipe Schema 2K+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #14 3 too high 18 SEO’n’AI – AI Image check&mark 100+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #17 1 too high 19 AI Scraping Protector 100+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #18 1 too high 20 WindCodex ScraperBlock – Block AI Scrapers & Bots from WordPress & WooCommerce 50+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #20 21 Forge AI Bot Log – Block AI Bots, Crawler Detection & Verification 90+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #16 5 too high 22 AlmaWeb AI Visitor Analytics 100+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #21 1 too high 23 AI Crawlers Visibility, Analytics & Control 10+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #22 1 too high 24 LLM Bot Tracker – AI Crawler Detection & Analytics 1K+ · 3.0★ (2) wp.org #24

Merit ranking caps the install boost at 1M (wp.org leaves it uncapped), replaces the raw star average with a volume-weighted Bayesian score and a Wilson lower bound, and keeps wp.org's own freshness and compatibility decays. Method from the plugin-directory source; see Meta Trac #8298. Positions are tracked daily from the first visit to a keyword, so the small arrows show movement since tracking began.