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wp.org search vs our merit ranking: “two player”

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 “two player”, we agree with wp.org on the top plugin, and our order differs from theirs on 8 of the top 20.

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 the install base is organic or host-pushed, and its risk of being pulled.

Ranked above its merit

FV Player 8 shows at wp.org #10 but places #24 on merit, a gap of 14 places. Its 1K+ installs carry it up the search order; its 4.0★ average from 2 reviews, plus freshness and upkeep, place it lower on our volume-weighted scale.

Buried gem

Seriously Simple Podcasting places #12 on merit, 4.7★ from 330 reviews, but shows at wp.org #23. A smaller install base keeps it further down the default search order than its quality signals alone would.

merit plugin wp.org
1 Presto Player 100K+ · 4.8★ (346) wp.org #1 2 Podcast Player – Your Podcasting Companion 10K+ · 4.8★ (113) wp.org #2 3 Music Player for Elementor – Audio Player & Podcast Player 10K+ · 4.7★ (123) wp.org #3 4 HTML5 Video Player – embed fast, responsive videos with ease 20K+ · 4.6★ (195) wp.org #4 5 CP Media Player – Audio Player and Video Player 3K+ · 4.4★ (46) wp.org #6 1 too low 6 Music Player for WooCommerce 1K+ · 4.8★ (61) wp.org #8 2 too low 7 FluentPlayer – Video Player With Forms & Lead Capture 2K+ · 4.7★ (14) wp.org #5 2 too high 8 All-in-One Video Gallery – Video Player & Galleries for YouTube, Vimeo & Self-Hosted Videos 20K+ · 4.8★ (136) wp.org #14 ↑1 6 too low 9 ElementsKit Elementor Addons – Advanced Widgets & Templates Addons for Elementor 1M+ · 4.9★ (2052) wp.org #19 ↑2 10 too low 10 GTM4WP – A Google Tag Manager (GTM) plugin for WordPress 700K+ · 4.5★ (155) wp.org #12 ↓1 2 too low 11 FV Flowplayer Video Player 10K+ · 4.4★ (90) wp.org #13 2 too low 12 Seriously Simple Podcasting 20K+ · 4.7★ (330) wp.org #23 ↓3 11 too low 13 Video Player Block – play videos beautifully on any device 2K+ · 5.0★ (8) wp.org #7 6 too high 14 Jetpack – AI Agents & MCP, Security, Backup & Analytics 3M+ · 3.7★ (2408) wp.org #21 ↓7 7 too low 15 Bradmax Player 1K+ · 4.3★ (11) wp.org #11 ↑1 4 too high 16 Custom Fonts – Host Your Fonts Locally 400K+ · 4.3★ (62) wp.org #24 8 too low 17 Lean Player – Video and Audio Player with Playlist for WordPress, Elementor and Gutenberg 2K+ · 4.7★ (6) wp.org #9 8 too high 18 Before After Image Comparison – Visual Comparison for Two Images 3K+ · 4.2★ (12) wp.org #17 ↑1 1 too high 19 Instaread Audio Player — Text-to-Speech & Article-to-Audio 90+ · 4.3★ (6) wp.org #18 ↑1 1 too high 20 Music Player for Easy Digital Downloads 200+ · 5.0★ (3) wp.org #15 ↑1 5 too high 21 Able Player, accessible HTML5 media player 300+ · 4.7★ (3) wp.org #16 ↑1 5 too high 22 GreetPlayer – Video Player, Video Bubble, Audio Player & Lead Capture 100+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #20 ↑2 2 too high 23 S Simple Radio Forty Two 10+ · 5.0★ (2) wp.org #22 ↑1 1 too high 24 FV Player 8 1K+ · 4.0★ (2) wp.org #10 14 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.