IEEE Spectrum has an interactive tool [1] that allows you to create your own ranking of languages by combining 12 different metrics (Google searches, Github repos,…) and then picking the type of languages (Web, Mobile, Enterprise, Embedded) that you want to compare against. Using the default weighting and comparing against all languages, Julia was 31 in 2017, 33 in 2016, and 39 in 2015. In 2017 Julia looked best when compared only against other ‘enterprise’ languages in which case if ranking only by Stack Overflow views Julia comes 10th and if ranking only by citations by papers in IEEE Xplore Julia comes 14th. My experience w publishing in IEEE publications is that there something like a 6-month delay between doing the work and publishing, so I guess the IEEE Xplore ranking is more indicative of work the authors were doing in 2016. The people publishing papers in IEEE conferences and journals are a target audience for Julia; I think the ranking is positive sign for Julia’s future.
Here is an image of the 2017 rankings of ‘enterprise’ languages ordered solely by IEEE Xplore citations.
[1] The 2017 Top Programming Languages - IEEE Spectrum