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Honest rankings: “social”

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

Jetpack Social sits at wp.org #1 but earns only #22 on merit , 96% of its ranking comes from install count alone, on 30K+ installs at just 3.3★.

Buried gem

WooCommerce deserves #3 on merit but wp.org shows it at #20 , 4.5★ from 4809 reviews, buried by lower-quality plugins with bigger install counts.

wp.org merit plugin Δ
1 #22 Jetpack Social 30K+ · 3.3★ (74) +21 2 — #2 Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed – Easy Social Feeds Plugin 1M+ · 4.9★ (4344) 0 3 #4 Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons 100K+ · 4.8★ (5333) +1 4 #16 Wp Social Login and Register Social Counter 90K+ · 4.7★ (66) +12 5 #24 Metricool – Social media and site statistics 80K+ · 3.9★ (7) +19 6 #21 Inavii Social Feed – Live Social Proof Gallery 9K+ · 5.0★ (16) +15 7 #6 Social Share Icons & Social Share Buttons 10K+ · 4.9★ (1911) -1 8 #20 Widgets for Social Photo Feed 10K+ · 4.7★ (25) +12 9 #7 Jetpack – WP Security, Backup, Speed, & Growth 3M+ · 3.8★ (2402) -2 10 #18 Simple Social Icons 100K+ · 4.3★ (92) +8 11 — #11 Simple Social Media Share Buttons – Social Sharing for Everyone 20K+ · 4.8★ (193) 0 12 #14 WP Social Ninja – Embed Social Feeds, User Reviews & Chat Widgets 30K+ · 4.8★ (70) +2 13 #9 Spotlight Social Feeds – Block, Shortcode, and Widget 60K+ · 4.7★ (169) -4 14 #15 Social Media Auto Poster – Schedule & Publish to Buffer 7K+ · 4.5★ (123) +1 15 #23 Ocean Social Sharing 60K+ · 4.5★ (11) +8 16 #1 Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI 10M+ · 4.8★ (27813) -15 17 #5 Nextend Social Login and Register 200K+ · 4.9★ (444) -12 18 #8 Social Feed Gallery 80K+ · 4.5★ (302) -10 19 — #19 Bit Social – Social Media Auto Poster and Scheduler 6K+ · 4.5★ (36) 0 20 #3 WooCommerce 7M+ · 4.5★ (4809) -17 21 #17 SureRank SEO – Smart Assistant with Meta Tags, Social Preview, XML Sitemap, and Schema 300K+ · 4.7★ (31) -4 22 #13 Hubbub Lite – Fast, free social sharing and follow buttons 30K+ · 4.7★ (172) -9 23 #10 Feed Them Social – Social Media Feeds, Video, and Photo Galleries 20K+ · 4.7★ (638) -13 24 #12 WPZOOM Connect: Social Icons Widget, Share Buttons & Click to Chat 90K+ · 4.9★ (144) -12

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.