This article is part of an article series designed to help you grow a successful business online with the WordPress CMS.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of surprising WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Popularity
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 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 is growing everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 built with WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
- The WordPress core application is regularly 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 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 type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS 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 websites and blogs are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 will see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress 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 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, local organizations – even nations use WordPress sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Dassault Aviation, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Activity
In other tutorials, we will discuss the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme directory …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
For more information about WP themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches 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 37 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WP users who participated in the survey stated 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 job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information presented above, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and actual tips on how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website 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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