This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners succeed online with the WordPress content publishing software.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
- WordPress For Business Owners – The Complete Guide To Building A Successful Business Using WordPress
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Surprising Statistics About WordPress Usage
Here is a summary of what we will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software every day.
- WordPress is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its usage 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 websites today are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated 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 released over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version releases have a tradition of being named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even nations are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial uses.
- 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).
You can see a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other tutorials, we will look at the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WP plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes …
(WordPress free themes repository)
For a detailed article about themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
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”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP-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 Services
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 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 developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of 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 CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic to your website, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide many tutorials and practical examples of how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
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
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)