Fascinating WordPress facts and statistics
Since 2003, WordPress has grown rapidly and has become one of the internet’s most popular Content Management System (CMS).
There are plenty of interesting facts and statistics that have come to light over the last 16 years and we’re going to document them in this article. Enjoy finding out more about WordPress.
The very beginning
WordPress was released on 27th May 2003 and was developed by Matt Mullenweg. The original post is still available to see now!
WordPress is older than some of your favourite social media websites
WordPress is older than Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006) and Instagram (2010). You may be interested to know that WordPress is not quite as old as LinkedIn which was founded in 2002.
WordPress took over 100 years to make
Okay, so this may be a tad misleading, seeing as it was created in 2003. However, Open Hub has developed a project cost calculator and Who Is Hosting This worked out that WordPress would have taken 112 years of working to complete, at a cost of over $6 million!
WordPress is powering the internet
According to Hosting Tribunal, in 2019, WordPress is powering 34% of the entire internet, an increase of 4% from 2018. Please just let this sink in! One-third of the internet is powered by WordPress – simply amazing!
Not only is WordPress dominating the website, but W3 Techs also found that “WordPress is used by 62.0% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 35.3% of all websites.”
Listen to WordPress – they’re proud of where they are today
As stated on the WordPress website, they are proud of some breath-taking statistics. The WordPress network is used by over 409 million people and they view over 15 billion webpages every month. WordPress also states that their “users publish about 41.7 million new posts and leave 60.5 million new comments each month”.
Interestingly (and a little strangely) WordPress has its own page dedicated to downloads and it is presented like a counter. At this precise moment I am sitting here writing this article, WordPress has been downloaded a staggering 27,601,798 times!
A lot of websites result in a lot of spam
WordPress is in demand and according to KW Finder, it is searched for almost 3 million times every month! However, demand is great, but spam is annoying. According to Akismet, there are over 450 billion spam messages posted every month.
Maybe even more remarkably, you are 6000 more likely to come across a spam comment than a real one. This statistics really showcases just how many spam comments are out there in the WordPress Network.
Domain demand is rapidly growing
In 2015, Built With concluded that every month, over 1.1 million WordPress domains were being registered and this number has grown since. The growth of WordPress is definitely showing no signs of slowing down!
WordPress is truly international
WordPress is truly an international CMS. Did you know that WordPress host blogs that are written in over 120 different languages? The top 10 languages used on WordPress are English (71%), Spanish (4.7%), Indonesian (2.4%), Portuguese (2.3%), French (1.5%), Russian (1.3%), German (1.2%), Italian (1%), Turkish (0.7%) and Dutch (0.6%).
The big boys use WordPress
WordPress is universally used by individuals and organisations because of its ease of use. However, did you know that some of the biggest businesses in the world use WordPress as their chosen CMS? WP Beginner researched which companies and bodies are using WordPress and found that the following all are: BBC America, Bloomberg Professional, the official Star Wars Blog, Sony Music, MTV News, the official PlayStation Blog and, maybe most impressively, the official website for the country of Sweden! There are obviously plenty more and the article on WP Beginner is well worth a read.
Plenty of Plugins
According to Brad Smith at Torque Magazine, there are over 50,000 WordPress plugins available to download and install on your website. This number, as you would expect, is constantly on the rise. Two of the most popular WordPress plugins are Yoast SEO and Contact Form 7. Both of these have over 5 million active downloads.
A huge company with a small number of workers (in comparison)
WordPress has just 1,154 employees working around the globe (source: Automattic). When you compare this to the 14,000 workers at eBay, 107,000 workers at Google, 647,000 workers at Amazon and almost 40,000 workers at Facebook – it really isn’t that much, is it?
WordPress Developers are paid pretty well
According to Payscale, the average WordPress Developer earns £51,000 per year. However, we’re not sure how useful this figure is because the roles will vary significantly in terms of seniority.
It does however still go to show that there is good money to be made if you work as a WordPress Developer and undoubtedly there is good job security as demand for WordPress blogs continues to increase globally as well as outsourcing of these types of projects.
Conclusion – WordPress is a wonderful CMS
Since its inception in 2003, WordPress has grown monumentally and has become a leading CMS used by millions of developers around the globe. The journey it has taken since the beginning has been captivating and I am sure we are not alone in saying how excited we are to see what developments occur in the future!
