Honest rankings: “rss”
WordPress.org search rewards raw install count with no ceiling, so the biggest install bases float to the top regardless of quality signals. Here's what searchers actually see, next to a merit ranking that caps the install factor and weights ratings by review volume. How this works →
Install-weight distortion
RSS Retriever Lite sits at wp.org #6 but earns only #23 on merit , 90% of its ranking comes from install count alone, on 200+ installs at just 5.0★.
Buried gem
Polylang deserves #3 on merit but wp.org shows it at #18 , 4.7★ from 2961 reviews, buried by lower-quality plugins with bigger install counts.
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.