Thought you knew WordPress? Think again.
Even savvy WordPress users, who work with cutting-edge WordPress plugins, often don’t understand the full power of the platform.
Check out these facts and stats below to get a full picture of the technology you’re working with — and discover ways to improve and optimize your site.
1. WordPress powers more than 32% of the web
According to the WordPress website, it is the most heavily used online publishing platform. In 2019, WordPress far outstripped its competitors:
[Image Source]
Joomla, Drupal, and other big names like Shopify and Squarespace clearly lag behind.
2. More than 409 million people view more than 20 billion WordPress sites per month
To keep users hooked, Automattic continues to roll out updates and develop services for WordPress.com on a daily basis. Check out their Activity page for the latest updates to optimize your own site.
3. Users on WordPress publish 70 million new posts and leave 77 million new comments per month
In a world where engagement on your website and blog posts is essential, knowing that WordPress has an enormous engagement rate is a comfort. You can bet that if you use WordPress, your site architecture and themes will be designed for a good user experience, helping attract a higher volume of interested visitors. (Again, the WordPress Activity page will keep you posted on the latest stats.)
4. There are over 120 languages on WordPress sites
WordPress is truly a global platform.
[Image Source]
The top 10 languages are:
- English: 71%
- Spanish: 4.7%
- Indonesian: 2.4%
- Portuguese (Brazil): 2.3%
- French: 1.5%
- Russian: 1.3%
- German: 1.2%
- Italian: 1%
- Turkish: 0.7%
- Dutch: 0.6%
Whether you’re in the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America, and beyond — WordPress is available for you.
5. Tens of thousands of new WordPress sites are created every day
From large enterprise websites like the National Football League to non-profits and even personal blogs – WordPress users are a diverse and growing bunch.
6. It’s easy to embed additional services into your WordPress page
Another stat that WordPress provides is how often users embed “shortcodes” from their partners, including YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr, to make their site more substantial and interactive.
For example, you can see how many posts use the YouTube service below:
Google Maps is another popular one.
[Sources for both images]
You can experiment with making your WordPress site more dynamic with these resources.
7. WordPress controls over 60% of the CMS market share
Here’s another way to view how popular WordPress is:
[Source]
While W3Techs’ full list has over 80, the above section shows just those with >1% market share. Either way, WordPress is 12X more powerful than its nearest rival.
8. WordPress has 54,723 plugins
You already know about Google Apps Login, Google Drive Embedder, Google Profile Avatars, Google Apps Directory, and the all-in-one Intranet for WordPress — our favorite plugins. But did you know there are 54,718 more?
Choose from plugins like:
- Average Travel Costs (which helps you budget for a trip)
- Yoast SEO (to help optimize your posts for search)
- Preferred Languages (which improves the user experience by eliminating English as the default for non-native English speakers)
Here’s the full list.
9. WordPress works with some big names
Ted, NBC Sports, Gigaom, UPS, TechCrunch, CNN, and CBS Radio are just a few.
10. Akismet gets rid of 7.5 million spam comments per hour
This plugin is essential for helping block malicious content. It also underscores how ubiquitous the WordPress platform is.
11. There are 1.1 million WordPress searches per month in the U.S.
And this is just a fraction of the global search traffic.
[Source: Ahrefs]
High search volume means high curiosity and user engagement with the platform.
12. WordPress.com is catching up to major social networks in monthly users
WordPress’ 156 million unique monthly visitors top Twitter’s 147 million (yet still shy of Facebook’s 213 million).
13. WordPress manages 42% of all nonprofit sites
You might think that WordPress is focused on chasing big companies; however, it has managed to capture an enormous share of nonprofit sites as well. Some high profile ones include:
These themes can inspire your own site design.
There You Have It!
13 surprising facts and stats to help round out your understanding of the WordPress platform. If you have more questions about designing, optimizing, and securing your site, we’d love to help. Our plugins are trusted by thousands of organizations from small businesses to NASDAQ-listed companies and government organizations.
Contact us here!
