How does the WP repository determine that two plugins are the same when counting active installs?

Question

I currently have a free WP plugin published on the official WP repo. I'm planning to release it on other platforms, but I want downloads from there (where you install the plugin by uploading a zip from your WP dashboard) to count towards the active installs in the official WP repo.

I'm not sure how to tell the repo that those plugins are the same. I assume having the same name won't count?

Thanks

Answer 1

Whenever a WordPress site is actively used it pings the WordPress plugin database to see if any of the installed plugins have new releases available to download. This is what happens when you load up your WordPress admin to write a post or do another task and you see an alert next to the “Plugins” menu telling you how many plugins you have that need updated. WordPress.org is simply collecting and updating its internal count of installs for each activated plugin you use during this check. Source

So, probably the same plugin text-domain could be enough. Maybe you could try to activate somewhere on the WP installation an older version of your plugin which was uploaded by zip to WP. If it is able to update from wodpress.org, it should work.