Tag: WordPress Statistics

This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you succeed online with WordPress.

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

• WordPress In Small Business – The Complete Guide To Growing A Successful Small Business With WordPress

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

WordPress: Usage And Market Share

A brief summary:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (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 well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 worldwide that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
• The WordPress software 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 seventy languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what can be built with WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, modify 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. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the most popular self-hosted CMS application 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, 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 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 sites are powered by the WordPress CMS platform.

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

For example, at the time this article was written, here 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 upgraded their installations to the latest version …

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

Even as this article 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 much higher 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.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new updates in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)

An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
• v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
• v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
• v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Well-known brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …

WordPress.org Website Showcase

Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Dole, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., Time.com, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of 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 own domain 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 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress.com publishes a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

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

General Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins …

(WordPress free plugins repository)

For more information about plugins go here:

• Using WordPress Plugins Expand Your Site’s Capability

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress free theme repository …

(WordPress.org free themes directory)

We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:

• Understanding WP Themes – A Practical Guide For Business Owners

Translations Of WordPress

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

(WordPress.org languages)

WordPress Searches

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …

(WP searches online)

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

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.

You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see from the facts and figures above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
• Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to drive more traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll provide loads of tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.

Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...

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

***