January 18, 2012 
If you’ve ever wonder what the most popular WordPress plugins were, the following list gives you a rundown.
All of the following plugins have been downloaded over 1 million times. Of course that measurement of popularity can be quibbled with because some of these plugins have been around for quite a long time, but for the purposes of this post, we’ve made the 1 million mark the cut-off point.
In any case, you can be sure that with so many downloads, these plugin have been put through their paces.
1. All in One SEO Pack (Download Here) – 9,723,648
This plugin helps to optimize you site for search engines.
2. *Akismet (Download Here) – 7, 931, 663
Anti-spam plugin. Akismet get an asterisk because it ships with WordPress, and therefore it gains an unfair advantage over other plugins. This is not to say that it doesn’t do it’s job well. It also gets an asterisk because it is not free for all sites. It requires ongoing payment for commercial sites.
3. Google XML Sitemaps (Download Here) – 6,808,455
This plugin generates an XML sitemap that helps search engines index your blog.
4. Contact Form 7 (Download Here) – 5,659,739
A plugin to provide and manage multiple contact forms.
5. NextGen Gallery (Download Here) – 4,507,710
NextGen is an image gallery plugin with lots of options.
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6. WPtouch (Download Here) – 2,910,545
This plugin transforms your website into an application-like theme that makes for easier viewing on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets.
7. WordPress.com Stats (Download Here) – 2,863,567
This plugin lets you tap into WordPress.com statistics system. It has now been incorporated into the Jetpack plugin.
8. WP Super Cache (Download Here) – 2,854,789
WP Super Cache generates static html files so that your site does not need to do as much work as it would otherwise.
9. Google Analytics for WordPress (Download Here) – 2,677,791
This plugin allows you to easily add custom variables (such as tracking authors, categories, etc.) to your Google Analytics account.
10. WP PageNavi (Download Here) – 2,201,673
This plugin provides advanced paging navigation for your site.
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11. Fast Secure Contact Form (Download Here) – 2,074,818
This plugin allows you to create contact forms for your site.
12. AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons (Download Here) – 2,042,752
AddToAny adds links to your site to help your visitors share, bookmark, and email your content.
13. *WordPress Importer (Download Here) – 1,787,640
Imports posts, pages, comments, categories, etc. from a WordPress export file. This plugin gets an asterisk because it is presented as the plugin to download for anyone who clicks on the Importer Tool in WordPress.
14. Google Analyticator (Download Here) – 1,666,256
This plugin allows you to enable Google Analytics without editing your theme. It also includes widgets for displaying Analytics data (for the administrator or on your blog).
15. WP e-Commerce (Download Here) – 1,566,487
WP e-Commerce is a shopping cart plugin for products, services, and digital downloads.
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16. SexyBookmarks (Download Here) – 1,506,637
This plugin adds a social bookmarking menu to your site.
17. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (Download Here) – 1,417,458
This plugin displays posts related to the current post.
18. Sociable (Download Here) – 1,338,743
This plugin adds links to social bookmarking sites from your content.
19. TinyMCE Advanced (Download Here) – 1,243,239
This plugin enables advanced feature of the WordPress visual editor (TinyMCE).
20. WP-DB-Backup (Download Here) – 1,229,149
This plugin allows you to easily back up your database for your site.
21. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam (Download Here) – 1,189,255
This is an anti-spam plugin for comments, registration, logins, etc.
22. Smart YouTube PRO (Download Here) – 1,128,047
This plugin allows you to insert videos and playlists into posts, comments, and RSS feeds. It also supports Vimeo, Metacafe, Liveleak, and Facebook.
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Photo: golden-red award labels from BigStock
Joseph Foley on Google+
Nice list!
It amazes me that so many of these are so poorly rated.
It’s not hard to imagine people who are dissatisfied having more motivation to rate the plugin than those who are happy with it. I think with so many ratings that 4 stars is excellent. And for those few plugins with more than 4 stars, that’s really excellent.
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These are great! didn’t even know half of them existed.
Nice plugin list… I’ll go through them carefully in a second. I do however like the ‘Subscribe to comments’ plugin too. So essential sometimes. Thanks ~ Martin
Thanks for the tip on WPtouch. I’ve been looking for this capability.
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I do see that you’re making a list of the most downloaded plugins. WordPress.com Stats has been replaced with Jetpack. Stats will even prompt you to update to Jetpack in the WP back-end.
Also, WP e-Commerce is one of the crappiest e-commerce solutions for WordPress. WooCommerce is light years ahead…
I like and use many of the other plugins. Thanks for the article!