Orderby doesn’t work like expected on custom query

First of all, never ever use query_posts. It breaks the main function and all plugins and functions relying on the main query object. For custom queries, use WP_Query or get_posts if aren’t looking to paginate the query

As for the following line

'orderby' => 'rr_recommends_count',

I can tell you that rr_recommends_count is an invalid value to the orderby parameter. Suspect that this is actually the key name, and the values are all numerical in that key, so you would use the meta_value_num value to the orderby parameter which is a valid value

'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',

Please see Order and Orderby Parameters in WP_Query

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