This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners succeed online.
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In this blog post, we present a number of impressive WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
The quick version:
- WordPress started 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 one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 using a content management system are driven 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. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS 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 users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites and blogs today are being 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 often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Dole, Panic, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., Time.com, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 in their own domain 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 that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later tutorials, we examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins …
(WordPress plugin repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
For more information about WordPress themes see this post:
WordPress In Other Languages
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 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 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who responded to the survey said 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 developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most cases when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
The information for this article 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://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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)