Tag: WordPress Usage

This article is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series aimed at helping small businesses grow online using the WordPress platform.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• Learn How To Grow Your Small Business Using WordPress

In this blog post, you will learn some impressive WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

Statistics And Usage About WordPress

Here is a summary of what you will learn in this post:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
• There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 worldwide that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.

WordPress Popularity

A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.

WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …

(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following WP usage statistics:

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 using the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.

For example, at the time this article was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …

(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even 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 page, you will see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 update versions in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …

(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)

An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• 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.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress?

In a nutshell, all kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Large corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress blogs …

WP Showcase

Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who use WordPress:

• Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, 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 the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …

WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide

In other tutorials, we examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …

(WordPress free plugins repository)

We have published a detailed article about WP plugins here:

• Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Site’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …

(WordPress.org themes directory)

For a detailed article about themes go here:

• A Handy Guide To WP Themes

Translations Of WordPress

WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages 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. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WP users who participated in 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 US$50.

You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …

According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can see from the above facts and figures, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.

In other articles, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your small business online,
• Over fifty great 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 the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing ”how to” tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.

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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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