This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small business owners grow and succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers 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 installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 websites worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, modify and manage 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 blogging tool 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 websites are now being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change 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 figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article 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 download figure … perhaps even a different 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 released over 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are typically named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Leading corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Dole, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in 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 customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business uses.
- 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 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later articles, we explain the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress themes directory …
(WP free themes directory)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP 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 gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WP users who participated in the survey stated 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 at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $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 market.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new tutorials and practical examples and tips of how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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Sources:
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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