WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow online using WordPress.

For more information about of the article series, go here:

• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

In this blog post, we present a number of impressive WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.

Statistics About WordPress Usage

Below is a summary of what we will cover:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are driven by WordPress.
• WordPress sites around the world publish an average of 24 posts per second.
• WordPress sites receive over 22 billion monthly pageviews.
• WordPress blogs receive around 50 million comments per month.
• WordPress has been translated into over 70 languages.
• More than 60% of all sites worldwide that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
• The WordPress software is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what you can build with WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress is owned by Automattic.com, which currently employs around 300 people, all of whom are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …

(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage stats:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WordPress usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)

In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …

(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)

In fact, more websites today are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this post was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …

(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions since 2003 …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)

WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …

(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases are typically named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress?

A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.

Popular brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress to run their official websites …

WP Showcase

Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people using WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, Time.com, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
• More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
• In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

In other tutorials, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugins directory …

(WordPress.org free plugins repository)

For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:

• Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Web Site’s Capabilities

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost …

(WordPress.org theme directory)

For a detailed article about themes go here:

• A Handy Guide To Understanding WP Themes

WordPress Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …

(WordPress.org languages)

WordPress Searches Online

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.

WordPress Rates

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.

You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can see from the information presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.

In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
• Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted traffic, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of ”how to” tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.

Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...

References:

The information for this article was sourced from various locations around the web, including the following sites:

• https://wordpress.org
• https://wordpress.com
• http://automattic.com
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
• http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all
• http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
• http://ma.tt/2014/10/sotw-2014
• https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
• http://torquemag.io/13-surprising-wordpress-statistics
• https://websitebuilder.org/resources/amazing-facts-you-probably-dont-know-about-wordpress

***