Plugin Pulse Beta
← Rankings

wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “exclude pages”

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 “exclude pages”, we agree with wp.org on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 8 of the top 20.

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

Exclude Category from Blog shows at wp.org #4 but places #17 on merit, a gap of 13 places. Its 1K+ installs carry it up the search order; its 4.0★ average from 7 reviews, plus freshness and upkeep, place it lower on our volume-weighted scale.

Buried gem

TranslatePress – Translate Multilingual sites with AI Translation places #12 on merit, 4.7★ from 1667 reviews, but shows at wp.org #22. A smaller install base keeps it further down the default search order than its quality signals alone would.

merit plugin wp.org
1 Search Exclude 50K+ · 4.8★ (218) wp.org #1 2 Super Page Cache – Cloudflare Cache, Page Speed & Core Web Vitals 70K+ · 4.8★ (517) wp.org #2 3 WP-Optimize – Cache, Compress images, Minify & Clean database to boost page speed & performance 1M+ · 4.8★ (2617) wp.org #3 4 Table of Contents Plus – Automatic Table of Contents for Posts & Pages 200K+ · 4.5★ (187) wp.org #5 ↓1 1 too low 5 LiteSpeed Cache 7M+ · 4.8★ (2778) wp.org #9 ↓1 4 too low 6 CC Child Pages 9K+ · 4.9★ (49) wp.org #6 ↓1 7 Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI 10M+ · 4.8★ (27821) wp.org #15 ↑6 8 too low 8 P Page-list 30K+ · 4.7★ (89) wp.org #8 ↓1 9 LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder 400K+ · 4.3★ (874) wp.org #10 ↑1 1 too low 10 WP Sitemap Page 200K+ · 4.8★ (205) wp.org #12 ↓2 2 too low 11 Speed Optimizer – The All-In-One Performance-Boosting Plugin 1M+ · 4.2★ (641) wp.org #11 ↓2 12 TranslatePress – Translate Multilingual sites with AI Translation 400K+ · 4.7★ (1667) wp.org #22 ↓5 10 too low 13 Simple Page Ordering 100K+ · 4.7★ (131) wp.org #19 ↓1 6 too low 14 Page scroll to id 100K+ · 4.9★ (225) wp.org #14 ↓1 15 LoginPress | wp-login Custom Login Page Customizer 200K+ · 4.8★ (1077) wp.org #23 ↓2 8 too low 16 RSS Includes Pages 10K+ · 3.9★ (17) wp.org #7 ↓1 9 too high 17 Exclude Category from Blog 1K+ · 4.0★ (7) wp.org #4 13 too high 18 Conditionally display featured image on singular posts and pages 30K+ · 4.8★ (38) wp.org #17 ↓3 1 too high 19 Maintenance 1M+ · 4.4★ (869) wp.org #24 5 too low 20 HTML Page Sitemap (Block and Shortcode) 10K+ · 4.4★ (24) wp.org #20 ↓1 21 WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design 5K+ · 4.5★ (25) wp.org #21 ↓2 22 Duplicate Post – duplicate pages, copy content, clone posts 5K+ · 4.7★ (7) wp.org #18 4 too high 23 Exclude Attachment Link Suggestions 80+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #16 ↓1 7 too high 24 WP Sitemap Pages and Posts 1K+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #13 ↓1 11 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.