Tag: Growth Of WordPress

This article is part of a multi-part article series designed to help you understand why the WordPress platform can help your business succeed online.

For more information about of the article series, see this post:

• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow Your Business Online

In this blog post, you will learn some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.

WordPress: Statistics And Popularity

A brief summary:

• WordPress started in 2003.
• WordPress is available as a hosted application (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 over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to eliminate 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 plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what you can build with WordPress.

WordPress CMS Market Share

In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier 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. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …

(WordPress.com unique monthly visitors. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage stats:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WordPress CMS usage figures. 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 sites are using WordPress.

WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.

For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above number 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 …

(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress 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 update versions in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
• v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

Who doesn’t use WordPress? All different kinds of companies and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Giant brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even nations use WordPress …

WP Web Site Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:

• Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, YRC Freight, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Katie Couric, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Fortune, New York Post, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …

WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide

In later articles, we will present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

General WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost …

(WordPress.org free plugins directory)

For more information about plugins go here:

• WordPress Plugins – Expanding Your Site’s Capabilities

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes …

(WordPress.org themes directory)

We have written a great article about WordPress themes here:

• Understanding WP Themes – A Non-Technical User’s Guide

Translations Of WordPress

WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …

(WP language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

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”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 35 million …

(WordPress 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, a quarter of 33,000 WordPress users who answered the survey said that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 designers and developers 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, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
• Over 50 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 WordPress,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting lots of ”how to” tutorials and actual tips and examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.

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Information Sources:

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://wptrainme.com
• 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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