Does Google favor WordPress websites

There is no question WordPress is a popular choice when it comes to creating a website. Not only is it very easy to use, but there are tons of free templates/themes and plugins available. Since it is so popular you can find many help websites catered to WordPress.

Does Google really show some kind of favoritism towards WordPress based websites or any other specific scripts or software used to run a website?

I was kind of neutral on this one until I logged into Google webmaster tools not long ago to see a message that said:
“WordPress Update Available”.

So naturally I wanted to see what the full message contained.

Here is what the message said:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://dialme.com/,

Your site appears to be running an older version of WordPress. Google recommends that you update to the latest release. Older or unpatched software may be vulnerable to hacking or malware that can hurt your users. To download the latest release, visit the WordPress download page.

If you have any additional questions about why you are receiving this message, Google has provided more background information in a blog post about this subject.

Best wishes,

Google Search Quality Team

Shortly after I did upgrade which you can read about here if interested:
Upgrading to WordPress 3.2

Now I have used a number of different website scripts over the years and I can’t remember ever receiving a message in Google webmaster tools like this one.

After checking the blog post link, it also speaks of a Drupal module and Joomla extension update.

And the same post mentions Matt Mullenweg, i.e. the developer of WordPress.

So is there a little favoring WordPress, Drupal and Joomla going on with Google? Possibly. I guess if WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla do a good job and Google likes them, what do you do!

Obviously it would be difficult if not impossible to provide update notices for all the different types of websites and software scripts out there, but it would seem that Google does like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla a bit more than some others. And, they do provide notifications in webmaster tools about new releases.