I’m interested to know how the download history of plugins is calculated on WordPress.org.
I’m noticing that one of my plugins is displaying a small percentage of users using a version which I haven’t released yet via WordPress.org. Is it because I have installed it manually on a couple of my sites for testing?
I’ve answered a similar Question: Does the number of downloads displayed for a plug-in in the WordPress.org plug-in directory include automatic updates?
This is Otto’s blog post in make.wordpress.org with plenty of information about this stats.
Excerpts from the whole page (article and comments), worth reading in full: