WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping small businesses grow online with the WordPress CMS.

For an overview of the article series, go here: How To Grow Your Small Business With A WordPress Site

In this article, you will learn some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.

Some Facts And Figures About WordPress

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

• WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
• WordPress powers almost 27% of the internet. Over one-fifth of all websites around the world are built with 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 that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
• Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
• The WordPress software is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
• WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what you can do using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Popularity

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

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool 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.com, and Twitter …

(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly visitors. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress:

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

WP usage stats

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

In fact, more websites are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.

*** 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 keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.

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

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

Note: The above figure represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Less than half of all current users have upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …

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

As this article was being written, the number of downloads was already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add improved or new features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)

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

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

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version releases are named after Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
• v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Is Using WordPress

A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different types of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Global corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government department sites, community organizations – even nations use WordPress …

WordPress Site Showcase

Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who have chosen to use WordPress:

• Businesses & Companies: Bata, Public Storage Canada, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
• Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
• More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
• In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

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

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

In later posts, we will explain the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Additional Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WP plugins …

(WordPress plugin directory)

We have published a detailed article about plugins here: WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost from the WordPress free theme directory …

(WP themes directory)

For more information about WP themes see this post: Understanding WP Themes – A Practical Guide For Beginners

WordPress Language Translations

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

(WordPress languages)

Searching Online For WordPress

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”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 35 million …

(WordPress searches online)

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

WordPress Services

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who answered 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 designers and developers for hire at 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 see from the above facts and figures, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.

In other blog posts, we will address the following areas in great detail:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
• Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to drive targeted visitors, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be publishing new ”how to” tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.

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Sources:

The above statistics 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://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/

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Disclaimer: WordPress and its related trademarks are registered trademarks of Automattic, Inc. This site and the services and products offered on this site are not affiliated, associated, sponsored, or endorsed by WordPress, nor have they been tested, reviewed, or certified by WordPress. The owner, contributors and/or advertisers may derive financial benefit from sales of items reviewed, linked to, or advertised on this site.

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