This blog post is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping you understand why WordPress can help your small business achieve its online goals.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one 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 significantly every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are powered 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 websites using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix 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 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS application 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage statistics. 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 and more sites are now being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 page, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of organizations and people are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Giant brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even nations are using WordPress …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 on their domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial applications.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress publishes a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Worldwide
In later articles, we compare the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress theme repository …
(WP free themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WordPress 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, 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 articles, we will cover the following:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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Information Sources:
The above figures were 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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