Tag: WordPress Statistics

This blog post is part of a series of articles aimed at helping you succeed online with WordPress.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• A Complete Guide To Growing Your Business Using A WordPress Blog

In this article, we present some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

Statistics And Usage Of WordPress

A brief summary:

• 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 a new WordPress website.
• 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 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 content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
• The WordPress core functionality 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 70 international languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.

WordPress Usage

A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage figures:

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

(WordPress CMS usage figures. 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 and more sites are now being built on the WordPress CMS application.

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

For example, at the time this article was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

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

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

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

As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer team 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 100 new update versions since 2003 …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are named after Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.

Global corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress …

WP Showcase

Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who are using WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Dole, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and modified 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, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).

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

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity

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

Other Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins …

(WP plugin repository)

For more information about plugins see this post:

• WP Plugins – Expand Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …

(WordPress.org themes repository)

We have published a detailed article about WordPress themes here:

• A Handy Guide To WordPress Themes

WordPress In Other Languages

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

(WordPress 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”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …

(WP searches online)

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

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all WP users who responded to 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 developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …

According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see from the above facts and figures, WordPress is set for continued growth for a long time to come.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a vehicle to grow your business online,
• Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be publishing many step-by-step tutorials and great tips and examples of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.

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Information Sources:

The above statistics 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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