Blog Trends – Spring 2018
Updated April 10, 2018
Understanding what’s hot and what’s not can greatly influence your decision about blogging software. Read on to see which freely available blogging platforms are winners and which are pretenders. Get the latest scoop on the Google search trends around these popular blogs.
Note: Images relate to Google Trends data as of April 2018. Data represented is wholly owned by Google, all rights reserved and attributed to Google as the source. The author makes no claims of ownership of this data, but is simple collating and sharing to show the latest trends in this niche.
Top 14 Blogs (plus search volume)
- WordPress (7,110,000,000)
- Open Blog (630,000,000) *Misleading results because of common naming of platform
- Pixie (2,790,000)
- Nucleus (1,860,000)
- Dotclear (1,020,000)
- b2evolution (923,000)
- LifeType (783,000)
- TextPattern (508,000)
- Chyrp (256,00)
- FlatPress (248,000)
- PivotX (217,000)
- HTMLy (136,000)
- eggBlog (64,500)
- NibbleBlog (46,400)
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What Search Volume Doesn’t Say
Having a single numeric value like search volume for April, 2018, is nice. It gives you a snapshot slice of life. It allows you to compare one versus another at this particular point in time. It even allows us to create a rank ordering or a leaderboard of who’s in the lead and who’s trailing.
What a snapshot single metric doesn’t give us is the ability to see which way things are heading. In order to get trend data, we’d have to look at that single metric across numerous points in time, so we could build trendlines to see who is improving relative to the others, and who is in a tailspin.
Because we’re collating data across various points in time, we could easily creating these trend graphs ourselves. Or, we could rely on the awesome historical data Google has exposed via their Google Trends subsite.
Blog Trend Snapshots
Below are images showing the trends of these top 14 free blogging platforms (all found within Softaculous, a 1-click installer available in KnownHost plans) as of April, 2018:
1. WordPress 
2. Open Blog 
3. Pixie 
4. Nucleus
5. Dotclear
6. b2evolution
7. LifeType
8. Textpattern
9. Chyrp
10. FlatPress
11. PivotX
12. HTMLy
13. eggBlog
14. Nibbleblog 
Winners and Losers
Using the above chart data, it appears pretty clear that a few blog platforms are picking up steam, a few are on the wane and some aren’t changing much from year to year.
Contenders
LifeType is one of the few blog platforms clearly on the rise (in search volume interest) – and it’s no small rise as of late. The project has had a burst of interest and looks poised to be a contender for some time!
NibbleBlog has really gotten the attention of searchers using Google in early 2018. The platform is clearly getting eyes on site and hopefully that means an ever improving and expanding product, giving blog owners more choices in the market.
Pretenders
Open Blog is showing signs of seriously eroding interest over the past few years. It’s not looking good, despite it being a quality bit of software!
Pixie’s future looks uncertain given a starting point of low volume and no signs of that improving – but rather further decline recently. Again, it’s not a bad platform – there’s just so many choices in the market.
b2evolution isn’t looking incredible healthy at this point with a long slow gradual decline that’s showing no signs of easing. We hate to see great projects like this on the slide, but we’re just reporting the Google Trends – not making any assessment the project or its future.
Textpattern is definitely showing signs of search interest decline over the past several years – but isn’t to be counted out just yet.
Chyrp seems to be skidding slightly as search interest numbers get smaller each year. In the future it could go either way – and with a cool name like Chyrp – how can you go wrong?
PivotX appears to be having some market share degradation – it’s hard to miss that decline in search volume.
Dead Even
WordPress continues to hold pretty steady in search volumes, though we know from install data that it’s still on the rise. The discrepancy is likely due to the fact that so many people are already familiar with the platform – so searches will tend to be much more specific about install issues, plugins, themes and so on.
Nucleus has been pretty steady over a number of years and isn’t showing any clear signs of gaining, or losing, market share. It’s a solid performer day in and day out, with a recent resurgence as of late 2017 into 2018.
Dotclear has also been steady over a number of years and isn’t showing any clear signs of gaining, or losing, market share. It’s looking pretty solid at this point.
Flatpress is holding ground over time and looks to be a stead, dependable, player in the market for some time.
HTMLy has also held ground and looks to be keeping pace, not showing signs of rise or decline.
EggBlog continues an odd peak and trough pattern – something that hasn’t changed for years – and that’s not a bad thing!
Conclusion
Softaculous makes it easy to install any or all of these blogging platforms with just 1-click. KnownHost makes it easy to own and manage a blog, with fully managed hosting plans from just $3.47 per month.
Whether you choose a blogging platform based on history, a recommendation from a friend, popularity on Google search or by randomly picking from a list… These 14 blogs represent a collection of easy to install, update and manage blog platforms that would be suitable for many different situations.
If you want to know if a plan or platform would fit your needs, just speak to one of the KnownHost sales reps who would be happy to answer you questions and help you find a great website host.