This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping small businesses succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Some Facts And Statistics
The brief version:
- WordPress started 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 one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number increases everyday.
- 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 that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon 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 core application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, 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 content on their site.
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 websites 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage stats. 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 and more websites are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the current 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)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version releases are typically named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, 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 application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domains 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 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress publishes a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later tutorials, we look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins directory …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress free theme repository …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For more information about WordPress themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 WordPress users who responded to 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in more detail:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing loads of ”how to” tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web 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:
- 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