This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow online with WordPress.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of impressive facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- 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 that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress core software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started 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 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WordPress usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage stats. 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 websites and blogs today are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a much higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress 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 one hundred new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Large corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, local organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Coca-Cola France, YRC Freight, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and 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, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress provides 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 address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WP plugin directory)
For a detailed article about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
For a detailed article about themes see this post:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 users who responded to 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 developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide lots of ”how to” tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence 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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