Author: WP Compendium

This blog post is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you understand why WordPress can help your business grow and succeed online using the WordPress CMS platform.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• Using WordPress – The Small Business Owner’s Guide

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

How Popular Is WordPress? Statistics About WordPress

Below is a summary of what we will cover:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
• There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what you can build with WordPress.

WordPress Usage

In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their website.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS application 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …

(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: Automattic.com)

Consider the following WP usage statistics:

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

(WordPress CMS usage figures. 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 and more websites are now being built on the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this article was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

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

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

(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 click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new updates in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)

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

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

Incidentally, all major WordPress updates have a tradition of being named after Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
• v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress?

In a nutshell, all types of businesses and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.

Global brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government department sites, community organizations – even nations are using WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …

WP Showcase

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

• Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and freely 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity

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

General WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin repository …

(WordPress free plugins repository)

We have published a detailed article about WP plugins here:

• Adding New Features And Functionality To Your WP Website With Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme repository …

(WordPress.org themes directory)

We have written a great article about themes here:

• About WordPress Themes – A Newbies’ Guide

Translations Of WordPress

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

(WordPress.org language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …

(WordPress searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.

WordPress Services

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

You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

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 in most cases when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
• Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of ”how to” tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.

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References:

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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