This blog post is part of a detailed multi-part series of articles designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Surprising Facts And Statistics
The brief version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases everyday.
- 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier 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. Since then, it has grown to become the widely-used 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites today are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
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 download figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 page, expect to see a significantly higher figure … 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Giant brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Coca-Cola France, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: 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 own domain names and modified 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity
In later articles, we examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about WP themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 users who answered 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 around US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the above information, 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 the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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References:
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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