Plugin Pulse Beta
← Rankings

wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “noarchive”

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 “noarchive”, we agree with wp.org on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 1 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.

merit plugin wp.org
1 noindex SEO 3K+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #1 2 S SFN Easy FAQ Manager 2K+ · 4.4★ (12) wp.org #3 1 too low 3 WPGraphQL Yoast SEO Addon 10K+ · 5.0★ (3) wp.org #2 1 too high 4 BotBlocker Security – Complete security platform 3K+ · 5.0★ (10) wp.org #4 5 PreviewShare 90+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #5 6 Rank Bix SEO – Lightweight SEO Toolkit with Multi-AI 10+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #9 ↑12 3 too low 7 PageProtectPro 10+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #7 8 StaticForge for Cloudflare Pages 10+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #6 2 too high 9 PufferSights – AI Crawler Insights 10+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #8 1 too high 10 Stedica SEO 10+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #10 ↑3 11 GatePass – Password Protect Pages, Posts, Entire Site & WooCommerce for WordPress 10+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #11 12 Self Destructing Posts — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #12 ↓2 13 XypherSEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #13 ↓2 14 Mente Clara Portal — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #14 15 D DumpSEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #15 16 DadsFam SEO 20+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #16 ↓7 17 RankVN SEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #17 ↓2 18 MEYDY Reel Studio — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #18 ↓2 19 Crownify — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #19 20 Chronition SEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #20 21 Tagwright SEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #21 22 WPInterface SEO — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #22 23 ModulusTools SEO Suite – AI SEO, Schema, XML Sitemaps, Redirects & llms.txt — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #23 24 SEOPulse – SEO tools to Boost your Rankings & Traffic — · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #24 ↓6

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.