Why your plugin’s downloads dropped, and what to check

A falling downloads chart is alarming, but on WordPress.org many drops are just a release spike ending. This guide shows how to tell a real drop from a normal week, then goes through the causes worth checking: the 180-day decay, “Tested up to”, rivals’ releases, ratings and support, your own listing edits, closures and security reports. A checklist closes it out.

First, check that the drop is real

WordPress.org counts every download, and every automatic update is a download. That’s why release days spike: a release day can run 15–30 times a normal day. So a normal week looks like a fall next to one that contained a release, even when nothing is wrong.

Compare typical days instead of single days. Take the median day of the last 30 days and compare it with the median day of the 30 before. A median ignores the one or two release days that would otherwise decide the answer.

Two more things to keep in mind:

• WordPress.org’s daily figures arrive a day or two late, so the newest day you see may not be yesterday.
• Downloads aren’t users; active installs are the better measure of reach. WordPress.org rounds installs down into bands such as 30,000+, so a band change means your real count just crossed a line. A sudden 0 is usually a gap in WordPress.org’s data, not a real fall.

How TrackWP’s drop alert defines a drop

TrackWP compares your newest official day with the median day of the four weeks before it, and needs at least 21 days of history to do so.

• A drop is a day at half that median or less, for plugins whose median is 40 downloads a day or more.
• A spike is a day at twice the median or more, and at least 50 above it. Spikes up to 3 days after a release aren’t reported, because that’s update traffic. Drops are reported even then.

Your plugin passed 180 days without a release

Search keeps a plugin’s freshness at full score for 180 days after its last release, then lowers it: to about ×0.90 by day 235, ×0.75 by day 330 and ×0.50 at day 540. It falls a little every day and applies to every search you appear in. Any new version resets it to ×1.00. The Decay Countdown shows your date.

A new WordPress release left “Tested up to” behind

Search gives full score while your “Tested up to” is within 0.1 of the current WordPress branch. Say your readme says 7.0 while 7.1 is current: you’re still at ×1.00. When the next major version ships, the same readme is 0.2 behind and drops to ×0.88 with nothing changed on your side, and 0.3 behind is ×0.77. If your drop started the week of a WordPress release, look here first. The fix is a readme edit, with no new code needed.

Rivals released or changed their listings

Rank is relative, so you can fall without changing anything. One cause sits right in the formula: a rival past its 180-day mark that ships an update goes straight back to ×1.00 freshness. A rival at 540 days (×0.50) doubles its score overnight.

Other changes that move a rival past you: putting your search in its name, a new short description or tags, an up-to-date “Tested up to”, a bigger installs band, a better rating, more resolved threads, or simply being a new plugin in the results. Check who is above you now that wasn’t last week, then read their changelogs and listings. The Keyword Tracker shows today’s top 20 for a search and where your plugin sits in the top 100, and the Rank Simulator puts your six factors next to the plugins around you.

Some movement has no visible cause: WordPress.org’s text matching shifts as listings are re-indexed, so results vary a little from day to day. A move of a place or two isn’t worth chasing; a fall of 3 places or more, or out of the top 10, is.

Ratings or support slipped

The rating factor is neutral at 4 stars, so falling from 4.5 to 4 stars costs about 6% of your score (×1.06 to ×1.00).

The support factor counts threads resolved in the last two months, so it slips whenever fewer threads get resolved, whether from a backlog or a quieter forum. Twenty resolved threads in two months give ×0.85; five give ×0.51, a score about 40% lower. Work through open threads and mark the ones you’ve answered resolved.

If the drop started right after a release, read your support forum for error reports about that version, and check your newest 1- and 2-star reviews, which feed straight into the rating factor.

You changed your own listing

If you renamed the plugin or rewrote the short description or tags, check that every word of your main searches is still there. Search only returns plugins whose text contains every word of a search, so a word that’s gone from your whole listing takes you out of that search. How to choose a plugin name, short description and tags that search can find explains which fields count.

Closures and security reports

A closed plugin drops out of search and can’t be installed, which explains a sudden, steep fall. WordPress.org emails the details to the plugin’s committers, so check that inbox first.

Also check whether a vulnerability has been reported against your current version; TrackWP’s plugin pages list known vulnerabilities from WPVulnerability. A fixed release protects your users and resets your freshness clock at the same time.

Checklist

1. Compare the median day of the last 30 days with the 30 before, not single days.
2. Check your active installs band. Has it actually moved?
3. Count the days since your last release. More than 180?
4. Compare “Tested up to” with the current WordPress branch. More than one branch behind?
5. Check your positions for your main searches, and who passed you.
6. Look at those rivals: releases, renames, new short descriptions or tags, new plugins.
7. Count resolved support threads in the last two months, and read your newest low reviews.
8. Re-read your own listing edits. Is every word of each main search still there?
9. Check your email for a closure notice, and your plugin for vulnerability reports.

TrackWP runs the downloads, freshness and “Tested up to” checks every night for plugins you track, and alerts you when one of them trips.