WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you succeed online.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• WordPress For Small Business – The Beginner’s Guide To Growing Your Successful Small Business Using A WordPress Blog

In this article, you will learn a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.

WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics

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

• WordPress started in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases everyday.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 sites using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
• Over 37 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 under an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
• WordPress is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
• WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is almost no limit to what you can do using WordPress.

WordPress Market Share

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 easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage content on their website.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: Automattic.com)

Consider the following WP usage stats:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WordPress usage stats. 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 today are being built on the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information 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 numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …

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

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

Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new updates in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)

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

(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)

An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.

Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress sites …

WordPress.org Web Site Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:

• Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Public Storage Canada, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
• 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

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

WordPress.com – Activity Around The World

In later tutorials, we discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Other WordPress Statistics

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins …

(WordPress.org plugin repository)

We have published a comprehensive article about plugins here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes …

(WP free themes directory)

For a detailed article about WordPress themes see this post:

• Understanding WordPress Themes – A Beginner’s Guide

WordPress Language Translations

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

(WP languages)

WordPress Searches Online

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

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

WordPress Rates

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WP users who participated in 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.

You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …

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

(Source: Upwork)

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

In other articles, we will cover the following areas of WordPress in detail:

• Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
• Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
• How to automate your business with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted traffic, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be providing loads of tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.

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Sources:

The above figures 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
• https://websitebuilder.org/resources/amazing-facts-you-probably-dont-know-about-wordpress

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