This blog post is part of a multi-part article series designed to help you grow a successful business online with the WordPress platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Impressive Facts And Statistics
The short version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows everyday.
- 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 using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
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, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following statistics 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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data 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 number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. 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 development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress releases are named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different types of organizations and people use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Giant brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even nations use WordPress blogs …
WP Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users 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 own domains 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog 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 look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WP plugin repository)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, 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 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress 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 …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see from the above statistics, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in great detail:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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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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"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