This blog post is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
The short version:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (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 worldwide. This number grows significantly every day.
- 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 websites worldwide that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month 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 continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- WordPress is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance 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 a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the widely-used self-hosted CMS application 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP CMS usage statistics:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites today are powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this 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 recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to 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 a different version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new update versions since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of enterprises and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress …
WordPress Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, DC Diaper Bank, Dassault Aviation, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and freely 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we will discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress plugin repository)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
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 searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the statistics presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other articles, we will address the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
- Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of ”how to” tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
References:
The information for this post 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
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com