This article is part of an article series designed to help you understand why the WordPress CMS platform can help your small business achieve its online goals.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of surprising WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
- 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 websites that use a CMS application are driven 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 built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do 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 users to add, edit 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. It is currently the widely-used self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage stats. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, 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 WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations 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 has already increased. If you 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 community 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 update versions since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are typically named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of companies and people are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Popular corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and customized 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 that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per 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 – Activity Worldwide
In later posts, we will look at the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have written a great article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress themes repository)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
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”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing lots of step-by-step tutorials and actual tips on how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
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Sources:
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
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