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wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “disk consumption”

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 “disk consumption”, we and wp.org disagree on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 2 of the top 19.

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

Plugin Memory Usage shows at wp.org #6 but places #10 on merit, a gap of 4 places. Its 500+ 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.

merit plugin wp.org
1 W3 Total Cache 900K+ · 4.4★ (5420) wp.org #2 1 too low 2 Disk Usage Sunburst 9K+ · 4.8★ (36) wp.org #1 1 too high 3 WP Server Health Stats 9K+ · 4.8★ (110) wp.org #4 1 too low 4 WP-Memory-Usage 10K+ · 4.5★ (21) wp.org #3 1 too high 5 Backup and Staging by WP Time Capsule 10K+ · 4.0★ (128) wp.org #5 6 Meep AI Translator – Multilingual for Elementor, WooCommerce & Forms 10+ · 5.0★ (4) wp.org #8 2 too low 7 W WP2Cloud 10+ · 4.4★ (18) wp.org #19 12 too low 8 Prime Cache – Page Cache & Core Web Vitals (Zero Config) 10+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #10 2 too low 9 GioCompress 30+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #7 2 too high 10 Plugin Memory Usage 500+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #6 4 too high 11 Alesta 10+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #9 2 too high 12 Static Cache Wrangler 20+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #11 1 too high 13 Media2URL: Cloud Media Storage & CDN — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #12 1 too high 14 Fleet Agent Site Manager – Securely Connects Your Sites to a WPMgr Dashboard 100+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #13 1 too high 15 Pointwise Summary – AI-Powered TLDR, AI Summarize & Social Sharing — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #14 1 too high 16 Q QH Markdown Exporter 70+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #15 1 too high 17 Genvoris Virtual Try-On — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #16 1 too high 18 ConvertyBot — AI Sales Assistant for WooCommerce — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #17 1 too high 19 Sentient AI — WordPress SEO Domination: AI-Powered GEO, AEO, Schema & Semantic Search — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #18 1 too high

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.