Tag: WordPress Statistics

This article is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping you understand why WordPress can help your business grow and succeed online.

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

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business

In this article, we present a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.

WordPress: Usage And Market Share

The short version:

• WordPress started in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (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 or blog.
• There are well 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 powered 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 websites worldwide that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
• The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress.

WordPress Market Dominance

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

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of websites 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

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

Consider the following WP usage figures:

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

(WP CMS usage stats. 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 websites today are using WordPress.

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

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

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

Note: The above download number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …

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

As this article was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a much higher download figure … 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 update versions to date …

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

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

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

An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress updates are typically named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• 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.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Giant corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …

WP Showcase

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

• Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Pixies, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain 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 belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

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

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity

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

Additional WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

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

(WordPress.org free plugins directory)

For a detailed article about WP plugins see this post:

• WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Website’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress free themes directory …

(WordPress theme directory)

For more information about WordPress themes go here:

• A Newbies’ Guide To Understanding WP Themes

Using WordPress In Different Languages

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

(WP language translations)

WordPress Searches

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

(WordPress-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 WordPress 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 average 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.com …

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

(Source: Upwork)

As you can see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
• Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate more traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll provide many tutorials and great tips on how to use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web 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://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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