Honest rankings: “table of contents”
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
Table Of Content Block – Auto-Generate Clickable Table of Contents sits at wp.org #5 but earns only #23 on merit , 94% of its ranking comes from install count alone, on 3K+ installs at just 5.0★.
Buried gem
Essential Addons for Elementor – Popular Elementor Templates & Widgets deserves #1 on merit but wp.org shows it at #17 , 4.9★ from 4088 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.