This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping small business owners grow online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Some Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 worldwide using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core software is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following statistics on WordPress usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage stats. 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 being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites 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 grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer 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 made available to users over one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases are named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of enterprises and people are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Bata, Dole, Panic, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and customized 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity
In later posts, we will present the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress plugin repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WordPress users who responded to 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the above statistics, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will address the following:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new ”how to” tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website 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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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum