This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Some Facts And Statistics
In short:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are built with 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 using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, 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 content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of websites 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 the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 are now powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress 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 were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of enterprises and people use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, Dole, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, New York Post, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial activities.
- 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress provides a live map that shows user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later articles, we will cover the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WP plugin repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress themes repository)
We have published a great article about WP themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 WP users who participated in the survey said that they make a full-time living off WordPress. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web 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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