Plugin Pulse Beta
← Rankings

wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “friendly permalinks”

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 “friendly permalinks”, we agree with wp.org on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 13 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.

W

Ranked above its merit

WP Print Friendly shows at wp.org #7 but places #22 on merit, a gap of 15 places. Its 500+ installs carry it up the search order; its 3.5★ average from 2 reviews, plus freshness and upkeep, place it lower on our volume-weighted scale.

Buried gem

Forminator Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form & Custom Form Builder places #10 on merit, 4.8★ from 2143 reviews, but shows at wp.org #23. A smaller install base keeps it further down the default search order than its quality signals alone would.

merit plugin wp.org
1 Custom Permalinks 100K+ · 4.1★ (116) wp.org #1 2 Permalink Manager Lite 100K+ · 4.8★ (176) wp.org #3 ↓1 1 too low 3 WP Better Permalinks 1K+ · 4.9★ (26) wp.org #2 ↓1 1 too high 4 AutoConvert Greeklish Permalinks 40K+ · 4.9★ (26) wp.org #4 ↓1 5 Remove Category URL – Remove ‘category’ base from category permalinks 40K+ · 4.3★ (61) wp.org #5 ↑1 6 LiteSpeed Cache 7M+ · 4.8★ (2778) wp.org #10 ↓1 4 too low 7 Redirection 100K+ · 5.0★ (419) wp.org #12 ↓1 5 too low 8 Smart Slider 3 800K+ · 4.9★ (1125) wp.org #13 ↑2 5 too low 9 Transliterator – Multilingual and Multi-script Text Conversion 3K+ · 4.8★ (96) wp.org #11 ↓3 2 too low 10 Forminator Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form & Custom Form Builder 600K+ · 4.8★ (2143) wp.org #23 ↑1 13 too low 11 404 to 301 – Redirect Manager, 301 Redirection, 404 Error Logs & 404 Monitoring 100K+ · 4.7★ (321) wp.org #22 ↓2 11 too low 12 Spotlight Social Photo Feed 60K+ · 4.7★ (171) wp.org #24 ↓3 12 too low 13 Slugs Manager: Delete Old Permalinks from WordPress Database 3K+ · 4.2★ (13) wp.org #8 5 too high 14 Rename Media Files: Improve Your SEO 8K+ · 4.8★ (40) wp.org #19 ↓3 5 too low 15 Gmedia Photo Gallery 7K+ · 4.3★ (260) wp.org #20 ↑3 5 too low 16 AI 60K+ · 4.2★ (10) wp.org #9 ↓2 7 too high 17 Linguator – AI Auto Translate & Create Multilingual Sites 3K+ · 4.6★ (20) wp.org #16 ↑3 1 too high 18 Pinyin Slugs 3K+ · 5.0★ (8) wp.org #14 ↓1 4 too high 19 YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter 70K+ · 3.5★ (98) wp.org #21 ↓3 2 too low 20 Custom Permalink Editor 4K+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #6 ↓2 14 too high 21 Dynamic AJAX Product Filters for WooCommerce 1K+ · 5.0★ (11) wp.org #18 ↓1 3 too high 22 W WP Print Friendly 500+ · 3.5★ (2) wp.org #7 ↓2 15 too high 23 R Remove Taxonomy Slug 400+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #15 ↓3 8 too high 24 P PTAPS – Post Type Archive Pages and Permalink Settings 80+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #17 ↓3 7 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.