This blog post is part of a series of articles designed to help you grow a successful business online using the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn 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 what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share About WordPress
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (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 installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are powered 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 CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
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 website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of websites 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS 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 are using WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data 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 figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 will see a much higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version releases are named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even countries are using WordPress …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Pixies, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, 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 & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domains and customized 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 that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later posts, we will cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WP themes see this post:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches 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 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all users who responded to 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your website, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing loads of ”how to” tutorials and actual examples and tips of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
The information for this post 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
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group