WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This article provides statistical information and data on WordPress usage worldwide …

This article is part of a detailed multi-part article series designed to help small business owners grow online using the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress

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

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

Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage

A brief summary:

  • 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 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
  • There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
  • WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 built with WordPress.
  • Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
  • WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
  • WordPress is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
  • WordPress is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
  • WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
  • WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
  • There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.

WordPress Market Dominance

A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.

WordPress began 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 accessed by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress is owned by Automattic.com, which currently employs around 300 people, all of whom are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …

WordPress.com monthly uniques

(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following WordPress usage figures:

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

WordPress usage stats

(WP usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)

In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …

WordPress usage statistics

(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)

In fact, more and more websites and blogs are now being built on the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.

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

WordPress downloads

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

Info

Note: The above download figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …

WP versions currently in use

(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development 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 versions since 2003 …

WP release archive

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)

WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …

WP release versions

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)

Info

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:

  • v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
  • v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
  • v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
  • v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
  • v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
  • etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All kinds of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Global corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress sites …

WordPress.org Showcase

WordPress Site Showcase

Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:

  • Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, YRC Freight, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
  • Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
  • Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
  • Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, CBS New York, etc.
  • Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

  • Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

You can see a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress.com - Activity Around The World

WordPress.com – Live Activity

In later posts, we will compare the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository …

WordPress.org plugin repository

(WordPress plugin repository)

For a detailed article about WordPress plugins go here:

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes …

WordPress themes directory

(WordPress.org theme repository)

We have published a great article about WP themes here:

Translations Of WordPress

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

WordPress.org language translations

(WordPress.org language translations)

WordPress Searches

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

(WordPress searches online)

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 WP users who answered the survey said that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com

WordPress Freelance Developers Upwork

According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

WordPress Job Cost Overview - Upwork.com

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.

In other articles, you will learn:

  • Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
  • Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
  • How to automate your business with WordPress,
  • How to drive targeted traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
  • Plus, we’ll be providing new tutorials and practical examples and tips on how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.

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Sources:

The information for this article was sourced from various locations around the web, including the following sites:

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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