This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Popularity
The brief version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number increases every day.
- 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 websites worldwide using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance 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 a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the largest self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites and accessed by tens of millions of people every day.
WordPress is owned by Automattic.com, which currently employs around 300 people, all of whom work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following statistics on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage stats. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress? All kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, local organizations – even countries are using WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, YRC Freight, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business purposes.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Worldwide
In later articles, we will explain 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 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress theme directory)
For a detailed article about themes see this post:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WordPress users who participated in the survey said 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 around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, WordPress is bound for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide lots of tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
The above statistics were 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
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