This article is part of a detailed multi-part article series designed to help you understand how WordPress can help your small business succeed online with WordPress.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred 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 powered 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 CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to eliminate 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 languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users 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 widely-used self-hosted blogging tool 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 so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. 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 and blogs are now being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article 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 page, you will see a much higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community 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 software versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different types of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, DC Diaper Bank, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, New York Post, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, 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 software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business 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 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we will address the difference 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 for free from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WP plugin directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WordPress themes for free from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WordPress free themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about WP themes here:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects 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. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 users who participated in 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new tutorials and useful tips on how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
The above figures were 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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