This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users grow online using the WordPress CMS.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn some surprising WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
Surprising Statistics About WordPress Usage
The brief version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (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 installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third 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 CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated 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 70 languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all 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 application 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique visitors. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the 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 updated their sites to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 will no doubt see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even an updated 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 released over 100 new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Well-known brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users 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 domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business use.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity
In other tutorials, we will present the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress theme repository …
(WordPress theme repository)
For a detailed article about themes see this post:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 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 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.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing loads of tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
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
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie