Tag: WordPress Statistics

This article is part of a multi-part article series designed to help small business owners grow and succeed online with the WordPress platform.

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

• Using WordPress To Grow A Successful Small Business Online

In this article, you will learn some impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

How Popular Is WordPress? Some Useful Facts And Figures About WordPress

The quick version:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
• There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress application is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Market Share

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

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …

(WordPress [hosted version] unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

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 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 websites and blogs today are using the WordPress CMS application.

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

For example, at the time this post was written, 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 most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …

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

Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, 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 over one hundred new software updates to date …

(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …

(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)

Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All kinds of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Popular corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to run their official sites …

WordPress Web Site Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:

• Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

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

• Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
• 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 per day).

You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

In later posts, we cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin repository …

(WordPress.org free plugins directory)

For more information about WP plugins go here:

• WordPress Plugins Extend Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme repository …

(WordPress.org free themes repository)

For more information about themes see this post:

• Understanding WordPress Themes – A Guide For Business Owners

WordPress In Other Languages

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

(WordPress language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times 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 WP users who answered 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 around US$50.

You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …

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

(Source: Upwork)

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

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your small business online,
• Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new step-by-step tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.

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References:

The information for this article was 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

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