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wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “robots.txt”

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 “robots.txt”, we and wp.org disagree on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 15 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

Magic robots.txt shows at wp.org #3 but places #17 on merit, a gap of 14 places. Its 1K+ 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

SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO places #6 on merit, 4.8★ from 1267 reviews, but shows at wp.org #24. A smaller install base keeps it further down the default search order than its quality signals alone would.

merit plugin wp.org
1 All in One SEO – AI SEO Plugin to Boost SEO Rankings & Traffic (Schema, Local SEO, Sitemap & SEO Insights) 2M+ · 4.7★ (5231) wp.org #2 1 too low 2 Virtual Robots.txt 40K+ · 4.3★ (10) wp.org #1 1 too high 3 Better Robots.txt – AI-Ready Crawl Control & Bot Governance 5K+ · 4.5★ (102) wp.org #4 1 too low 4 The SEO Framework – Fast, Automated, Effortless. 200K+ · 4.9★ (380) wp.org #8 4 too low 5 Blackhole for Bad Bots 30K+ · 4.7★ (148) wp.org #13 8 too low 6 SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO 300K+ · 4.8★ (1267) wp.org #24 18 too low 7 SureRank SEO – Meta Tags, Social Preview, XML Sitemap, Schema & Open Graph 300K+ · 4.8★ (51) wp.org #12 5 too low 8 WP Robots Txt 40K+ · 5.0★ (21) wp.org #10 2 too low 9 Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) 200K+ · 5.0★ (423) wp.org #23 14 too low 10 XML Sitemap & Google News 100K+ · 4.4★ (85) wp.org #15 5 too low 11 VigIA – AI Visibility, Analytics & Control 2K+ · 5.0★ (19) wp.org #14 3 too low 12 CrawlWP SEO – Complete WordPress SEO Plugin with AI, Indexing & Search Performance 30K+ · 4.7★ (62) wp.org #20 8 too low 13 ThinkRank SEO – AI SEO Plugin for SEO & Google Search Console 20K+ · 4.9★ (36) wp.org #16 3 too low 14 Bisteinoff SEO Robots.txt 400+ · 5.0★ (4) wp.org #7 7 too high 15 Admin Robots.txt Editor 800+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #5 10 too high 16 S Surbma | Yoast SEO Sitemap to robots.txt 2K+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #6 10 too high 17 Magic robots.txt 1K+ · 5.0★ (1) wp.org #3 14 too high 18 LLMs.txt and LLMs-Full.txt Generator 4K+ · 5.0★ (7) wp.org #17 1 too high 19 Visibility – Lightweight SEO, AEO and GEO for Search and AI 600+ · 5.0★ (6) wp.org #21 2 too low 20 SiteSEO – SEO Simplified 400K+ · 4.0★ (8) wp.org #11 9 too high 21 Block AI Crawlers 2K+ · 4.4★ (8) wp.org #18 3 too high 22 AI Scrape Protect 400+ · 4.7★ (3) wp.org #19 3 too high 23 Block Archive.org via WordPress robots.txt 400+ · 0.0★ (0) wp.org #9 14 too high 24 AI Content Signals 800+ · 5.0★ (3) wp.org #22 2 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.