WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This article is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress platform can help your business achieve its business goals online with the WordPress content publishing application.

For an overview of the article series, go here:

• Using WordPress To Grow Your Small Business

In this blog post, we present some facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.

Some Impressive Statistics About WordPress

The brief version:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
• There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases everyday.
• WordPress powers almost 27% of the internet. Over one-fifth 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 worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
• Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
• WordPress is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
• The WordPress application is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Market Dominance

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, modify and manage content on their site.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites 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 software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage statistics:

Over 60% of all websites worldwide are not CMS-based. Of those that are, WordPress is the leader, with over 60% of all market share.

WordPress usage figures

In terms of CMS market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …

In fact, more and more websites today are using the WordPress CMS application.

*** UPDATE ***

As of June 2017, around 30% of all CMS websites in the world are built using WordPress.

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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 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 number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Less than half of all current users upgrade their sites 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 had already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and improve or add new features.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …

(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 or so …

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

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are typically named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
• v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

In a nutshell, all different types of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.

Giant corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress sites …

WordPress.org Showcase

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

• Global Brands & Corporations: Bata, Boardshorts.com, Panic, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for marketing or promoting businesses.
• 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

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

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World

In later tutorials, we present the difference 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 plugins at no cost …

(WordPress plugin directory)

We have written a detailed article about WordPress plugins here:

• WordPress Plugins – Extend Your Website’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress free theme repository …

(WordPress.org theme directory)

We have published a great article about WP themes here:

• A Non-Technical User’s Guide To WP Themes

WordPress Translations

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

(WP language translations)

Searching Online For WordPress

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including 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 35 million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

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

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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 developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …

According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see, WordPress is poised for continued growth for a long time to come.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best vehicle for growing your business online,
• Over 50 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 drive targeted traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be providing loads of ”how to” tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.

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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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Disclaimer: We have no direct association with WordPress or any products mentioned or reviewed on this website. We may receive an affiliate commission from sales of third-party services and products mentioned on this website. All images remain the copyright of their respective owners and comply with all license terms and agreements of use.

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