This article is part of a series of articles designed to help small business owners succeed online with the WordPress content publishing software.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some impressive statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (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 website.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 sites that use 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 is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all 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 largest self-hosted blogging tool 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 and more sites today are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes 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 download figure 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 in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer 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 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 or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress updates are traditionally named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Well-known corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business uses.
- 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In later tutorials, we cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
We have published a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For more information about themes see this post:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP users who responded to the survey stated 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, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information above, WordPress is bound for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many ”how to” tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website 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://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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