WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This article is part of a multi-part article series aimed at helping small business owners grow and succeed online.

For more information about of the article series, go here:

• WordPress For Business Owners – An Online Guide To Building A Successful Small Business With A WordPress Blog

In this article, we present 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 websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

Statistics And Usage About WordPress

In short:

• WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (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 a new WordPress site.
• There are well 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 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 driven by WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
• The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
• WordPress delivers 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 plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Market Dominance

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

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)

Consider the following WP usage statistics:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WP 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 websites are powered by the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.

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 updated their installations to the latest version …

(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even as this article 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 much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer 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 made available over 100 new updates since 2003 …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)

WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …

(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version releases have a tradition of being named after Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
• v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
• v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

In a nutshell, all different kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.

Global corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …

WordPress Website Showcase

Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who use WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Fortune, New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of enterprise.
• 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 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

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

WordPress.com – Live Activity

In later tutorials, we will examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository …

(WordPress free plugins directory)

For a detailed article about plugins go here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Blog With WP Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free theme repository …

(WordPress.org free themes repository)

For more information about themes go here:

• A Newbies’ Guide To WP Themes

WordPress Language Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …

(WP languages)

WordPress Searches Online

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …

(WP-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one 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, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see from the above statistics, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
• Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• How to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be publishing lots of ”how to” tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.

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Sources:

The information for this post 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://wptrainme.com
• 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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