This article is part of an article series aimed at helping small business owners grow online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Popularity
In short:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 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 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 that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress core functionality is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
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 CMS application 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique visits. Source: Automattic.com)
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 trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WP 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, you should expect to see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, local organizations – even countries use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Snoop Dogg, Katie Couric, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, IMC TV, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (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 own domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In other articles, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about WP themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional 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 thirty million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing many step-by-step tutorials and actual examples on how to use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website 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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