This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses grow online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of surprising WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress: How Popular Is It? Some Impressive Statistics About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: 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 website or blog.
- 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 websites worldwide using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress each day.
- WordPress is continually being 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 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
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 owners to add, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now 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 software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage figures. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are now being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so often.
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 download figure 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 …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress upgrades are typically named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- 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 different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Giant brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, local organizations – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Boardshorts.com, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (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 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 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.com – Live Activity
In other tutorials, we discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs 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 plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes for free from the WordPress theme directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress 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. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WP 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 …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of 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 WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new ”how to” tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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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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