This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you understand why the WordPress content publishing software can help your business grow online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics
The short version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- The WordPress core program is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, 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, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS 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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites and blogs are now being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes 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 download numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post 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 no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of companies and people use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Giant corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, DC Diaper Bank, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, 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 clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity
In later articles, we will discuss the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have published a great article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress theme directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is 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 answered the survey stated 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 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 cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the statistics above, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress in great detail:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web 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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