This article is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles aimed at helping you grow a successful business online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics
The brief version:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
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 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. Since then, it has grown to become the largest 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 sites are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 site, you will see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer team 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 since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of companies and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Public Storage Canada, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, 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: Time Inc., The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every 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.com – Activity
In other tutorials, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WP theme directory)
For a detailed article about WP themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 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 Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 users who answered 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 …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress 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.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new step-by-step tutorials and great examples and tips of how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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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
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