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Honest rankings: “seo”

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

SEO SIMPLE PACK sits at wp.org #10 but earns only #19 on merit , 97% of its ranking comes from install count alone, on 100K+ installs at just 4.6★.

Buried gem

WooCommerce deserves #7 on merit but wp.org shows it at #19 , 4.5★ from 4809 reviews, buried by lower-quality plugins with bigger install counts.

wp.org merit plugin Δ
1 #2 Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings 4M+ · 4.8★ (7459) +1 2 #1 Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI 10M+ · 4.8★ (27813) -1 3 #4 All in One SEO – AI SEO Plugin to Boost SEO Rankings & Traffic (Schema, Local SEO, Sitemap & SEO Insights) 3M+ · 4.7★ (5164) +1 4 #8 SEOPress – AI SEO Plugin & On-site SEO 300K+ · 4.8★ (1234) +4 5 #11 Slim SEO – A Fast & Automated SEO Plugin For WordPress 60K+ · 4.7★ (136) +6 6 — #6 LiteSpeed Cache 7M+ · 4.8★ (2761) 0 7 #9 GEO Plugin by Squirrly SEO 30K+ · 4.6★ (679) +2 8 #15 Xagio SEO – AI Powered SEO 10K+ · 4.9★ (51) +7 9 #12 SmartCrawl SEO checker, analyzer & optimizer 20K+ · 4.8★ (169) +3 10 #19 SEO SIMPLE PACK 100K+ · 4.6★ (14) +9 11 #3 Translate WordPress with GTranslate 900K+ · 4.9★ (4925) -8 12 #10 The SEO Framework – Fast, Automated, Effortless. 200K+ · 4.9★ (378) -2 13 #16 SEO Engine – Smart SEO with AI, Schema & Redirection for WordPress 1K+ · 4.9★ (43) +3 14 #13 CrawlWP SEO – Instant Search Engine Indexing & SEO Performance Monitor 40K+ · 4.7★ (58) -1 15 #14 SureRank SEO – Smart Assistant with Meta Tags, Social Preview, XML Sitemap, and Schema 300K+ · 4.7★ (31) -1 16 #5 Widgets for Google Reviews 900K+ · 4.9★ (2599) -11 17 #20 SiteSEO – SEO Simplified 500K+ · 4.0★ (9) +3 18 #17 Simple SEO 10K+ · 4.7★ (33) -1 19 #7 WooCommerce 7M+ · 4.5★ (4809) -12 20 #21 Easy MCP AI – Connector for Claude, ChatGPT & SEO Data 3K+ · 5.0★ (6) +1 21 #18 ACF Content Analysis for Yoast SEO 100K+ · 4.2★ (34) -3 22 #24 BoldGrid Easy SEO – Simple and Effective SEO 40K+ · 3.0★ (3) +2 23 #22 WPGraphQL Yoast SEO Addon 10K+ · 5.0★ (2) -1 24 #23 Soro – SEO Autopilot & AI Content Writer 10K+ · 5.0★ (2) -1

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.