Tag: WordPress Statistics

This article is part of an article series designed to help you grow a successful business online using the WordPress CMS.

For more information about of the article series, go here:

• Using A WordPress Blog To Grow A Successful Business Online

In this blog post, you will learn a number of impressive WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.

Statistics And Usage Of WordPress

In short:

• WordPress started in 2003.
• WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. 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 content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
• The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what you can build using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Usage

In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:

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

(WP 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 websites are powered by WordPress.

WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this post was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

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

Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …

(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

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 site, you will see a significantly higher download number … 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 100 new updates since 2003 …

(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after well-known 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.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress?

In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.

Giant brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …

WordPress.org Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, institutions and people who are using WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 domain 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity

In other tutorials, we will look at the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Other WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WP plugins from the WordPress free plugins directory …

(WordPress plugin repository)

We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Improving Your Website’s Capability

WordPress Themes

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

(WordPress.org theme directory)

For a detailed article about themes go here:

• A Non-Technical User’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress Language Translations

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

(WordPress.org language translations)

WordPress Searches

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …

(WordPress searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 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 average 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.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $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 dominate the CMS landscape.

In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
• Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to generate more traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be publishing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web 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://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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