Drupal's Results in the 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report

Last Friday, CMSWire announced the release of the second annual 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report. The project was a collaborative effort with the full service digital marketing agency, water & stone.

Disclaimer

I have no affiliation with CMSWire or water & stone. I am discussing the results for this report with a fresh set of eyes and am doing so in order to share the findings that appeal to the Drupal community. By no means should these results be used for commercial purposes. To view the license terms for this report, visit this link.

Report Overview

The report measures the brand strength and market share of 20 open source content management systems. The goal is to provide a body of useful data that will assist the average consumer in making an educated decision when choosing an open source CMS. The research was assessed using a variety of metrics related to two main categories: Rate of Adoption and Brand Strength. Within each category broad trends and patterns were identified that divided the projects into one of three classifications: Leaders, Movers, or Laggards. Overall, there were 622 respondents to the survey. Some of the areas of discussion did not have responses from all 622 respondents. Because Volacci is a raving fan of Drupal, we have catered the results for fellow Drupal community supporters.

CMS Participants

• Alfresco
• CMS Made Simple
• DotNetNuke
• Drupal
• e107
• eZ Publish
• Jahia
• Joomla!
• Liferay
• MODx
• OpenCms
• phpWebSite
• Plone
• SilverStripe
• Textpattern
• TikiWiki
• Typo3
• Umbraco
•WordPress
• Xoops

Rate of Adoption

Average Download Rate

• Drupal finished a strong third behind WordPress (433,767) and Joomla!(189,429) with 62,500 average weekly downloads.

Evaluation & Trial Usage

• Drupal again finished a strong third with over 300 people reporting that they have evaluated Drupal and almost 200 people reported using Drupal. (out of 622)

Current Usage

• Base of responses were 520. Drupal came in second with 14.0% of respondents currently using Drupal. Joomla! was first with 20.6% and WordPress was third with 13.7%.

3rd Party Support

This metric looked at two groups of service providers: Developers and publishers.

• For Developers - Drupal was again a market leader with the third most developers for the system.

• Publishers - Drupal is a leader with Joomla!, having 25 books in print, 18 in the last month, and 10 announced. Including the Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization book just released by Packt Publishing and written by Volacci’s CEO Ben Finklea.

Brand Strength

Search Engine Visibility/Ranking on Relevant Keywords

• Drupal showed the most improvement during the measurement period (15 Aug 2008 15 Aug 2009) for search engine prominence and visibility.

Google PageRank

• Drupal scored an 8 out of 10 and finished behind Joomla!, Plone, and WordPress, who all were given a 9 out of 10.

Popularity Metrics

This metric looked at each system’s primary project website and determined which was most popular, depending on the amount of traffic.

• Drupal was ranked in third by Alexa, Compete, and second by Quantcast.

Mindshare - Brand Recognition

• Drupal tied for second (with Joomla!) with 82.6% of the respondents recognizing the brand name. More than 4 out of 5 respondents knew Drupal.

• Brand Familiarity - Drupal scored just under 50% of respondents claiming to be
“familiar” or “very familiar” with the CMS.

• Search Engine (Monthly) Query Volume (using Google Keyword Tool) - Drupal 2,240,000 (2nd place) to Joomla! 9,140,000, with Drupal exhibiting a positive trend.

Social Media Prominence

This is where Drupal really excelled. Drupal enjoys a significant lead over any other CMS in the social media arena. Drupal was the leader in micro-blogging, largely as a result of strong Twitter activity by Drupal community members and fans.

• These findings are based on a snap shot of 90 day period, 15 April - 15 July, 2009

• Drupal has the largest Share Of Voice in micro-blogging, with 40% of the market and more than twice the activity of the second-largest share, belonging to Joomla! (19%).

• Drupal has 21% Blogging share of Voice, second only to WordPress (51%).

• Within the cumulative blogging arena, Drupal shares a position with Joomla! as a market leader.

• Drupal was first with 29% of the Forum & Discussion Board Share Of Voice. WordPress and Joomla! were both a close second at 22%.

• Drupal’s Other Social Media Share of Voice is 39%, and leading all other CMSes, including Joomla! (34%).

Reputation Indicators

Brand Sentiment - Drupal finished second highest in positive brand sentiment with over 75% positive responses.

Awards Received - Drupal was the leader with 9 awards.

Cumulative Social Bookmarking Activity

Drupal leads with 15, 936 Delicious (+30%), 244 Digg (+3,967%), and 40 Reddit (+100%)

Inbound Links - Drupal finished second with 285,000 inbound links, but Joomla! finished well ahead with three times as many links.

Summary:

Drupal is one of the “Big Three” CMSes (Joomla! and WordPress) that dominate across all metrics as overall Market Leaders. They not only showed strength but utter dominance. Drupal excelled most in social media prominence. This report is just further support as to why Drupal is one of the best content management systems and publishing platforms available for your business.