Query posts WITHOUT a custom meta field
You have to do a join or a subquery: $querystr = ” SELECT $wpdb->posts.ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE $wpdb->posts.post_type=”post” AND $wpdb->posts.post_date < NOW() AND $wpdb->posts.ID NOT IN ( SELECT DISTINCT post_id FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = ‘_social_’ ) ORDER BY $wpdb->posts.score DESC LIMIT 1; “;