This blog post is part of an article series designed to help you understand how WordPress can help your business achieve its online goals.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn some impressive statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: How Popular Is It? Useful Statistics About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (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 a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month 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. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core software is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, 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, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP CMS usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 today are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current 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 page, you should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version updates are typically named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Giant corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to run their official websites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, YRC Freight, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 on their own domain and freely modified 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later tutorials, we will look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugins directory …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress theme repository)
For more information about WP themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding 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-seven million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is 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 and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your business online,
- Over fifty 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 with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting lots of tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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References:
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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