This blog post is part of an article series designed to help you understand why the WordPress content publishing platform can help your business achieve its online goals.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Some Surprising Statistics About WordPress Usage
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).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. 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 websites that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of websites 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage figures. 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 today are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development 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 one hundred new updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government sectors, community organizations – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, DC Diaper Bank, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 new 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 (Hosted Version) – Activity
In later articles, we will cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WP plugin repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org theme directory)
We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
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 WordPress. 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 …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information presented above, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your site, increase conversions, and how to 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 and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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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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