This article is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what we will cover:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over sixty 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 driven by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis 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 seventy languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites and seen 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 the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress CMS usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage figures. 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 being powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download number represents only the latest 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 were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer 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 software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress upgrades are traditionally named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of organizations and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, community organizations – even nations use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, YRC Freight, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- 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 every 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
In other articles, we examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress free plugins directory)
For a detailed article about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WordPress themes …
(WordPress free themes repository)
We have written a great article about themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches 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 Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 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 around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing ”how to” tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now