This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn some impressive WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Surprising Statistics About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number increases 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using 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 every day.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis 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.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites and seen 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WP CMS usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage statistics. 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 and blogs are being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so often.
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 number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress community 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 to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Popular corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even countries use WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., The Australian, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial uses.
- 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Worldwide
In other articles, we cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For a detailed article about themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress users who participated in the survey said 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 developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for many years to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing many step-by-step tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website 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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