This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you understand why the WordPress content publishing platform can help your small business achieve its online goals.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Market Share
In short:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely 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. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core application is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve its usage 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 almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier 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 content management system (CMS) 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having 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 [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage stats. 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 sites are now being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post 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 latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 site, you will no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even a different 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 over one hundred new software updates to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are typically named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Well-known corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, community organizations – even nations use WordPress to run their official sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of commercial enterprise.
- 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 self-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 – Activity
In later posts, we will explain the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress free plugins directory)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have published a detailed article about WP themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your website, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new tutorials and great tips of how to use WordPress to expand your business online, and save 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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