This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help you succeed online using the WordPress CMS.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some surprising WordPress usage facts and figures 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 businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of 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 well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are driven 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 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. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve both its features 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
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, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of sites 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 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 Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage statistics. 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 websites are now being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figures 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)
Even 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 should expect to see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a different 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 made available to users over 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred 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 version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are typically named after Jazz musicians, 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.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Well-known corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Google Ventures, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business applications.
- 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org theme repository)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress 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”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 35 million …
(WP-related 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, a quarter 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the above facts and figures, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in more detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing ongoing tutorials and examples 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.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
Information Sources:
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
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group