Tag: WordPress Stats

This article is part of a detailed multi-part article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users succeed online using WordPress.

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

• Everything You Need To Know To Grow A Successful Business Online With WordPress

In this article, you will learn some surprising WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

WordPress Usage Statistics

A brief summary:

• WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
• 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 websites worldwide that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually built by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
• WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
• WordPress can deliver your 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

In simple terms, 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 website users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress usage:

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 and more sites are now being powered by WordPress.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.

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 recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …

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

As this post 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 site, you should expect to see a much 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.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions since 2003 …

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

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

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

An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are traditionally named after Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress?

In a nutshell, all different kinds of enterprises and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Large corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even countries are using WordPress sites …

WordPress Showcase

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

• Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

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

• Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business activities.
• 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity

In other articles, we cover the difference 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 free WP plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …

(WordPress plugin repository)

We have written a great article about plugins here:

• WP Plugins – Extend Your Website’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free …

(WordPress.org theme directory)

For more information about themes see this post:

• A Handy Guide To WP Themes

WordPress Language Translations

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

(WordPress.org languages)

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”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …

(WP-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times 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 answered the survey said that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …

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

(Source: Upwork)

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

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your small business online,
• Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing step-by-step tutorials and practical tips and examples of how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website 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://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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