This blog post is part of an article series designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn some WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Facts And Figures About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress 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 Usage
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, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 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, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP usage stats:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites are being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates are typically named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All kinds of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Giant brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to run their official sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Coca-Cola France, Glad, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and freely 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress provides a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
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 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
We have written a great article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WP free themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about WP themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WP users who participated in 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 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.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
The information for this post 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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