Brands over time

giffgaff
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

63 of giffgaff's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2019 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 12 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 14 other mobile and broadband providers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
63
Years covered
2019–26
Archived before ChatGPT
12
Blog · press
22 · 41

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

giffgaff's homepage from 2009 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026giffgaff.com23 Jun 2026
giffgaff homepage, 23 Jun 2026

Screenshot of giffgaff’s homepage (giffgaff.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 23 Jun 2026. © giffgaff or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by giffgaff.

Homepage

2026

“Take a peek”

Page title

giffgaff

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2011The mobile network run by you
  2. 2013A new way to do mobile
  3. 2015Award winners two years in a row.
  4. 2016iPhone. Ready and waiting
  5. 2019Looking for a phone?
  6. 2025Take a peek

15 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
5
10
15
Telecoms avg 13.2
10.3
12.8
10.9
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
2017no pages
2018no pages
20194 pp
202011 pp
2021no pages
2022no pages
2023no pages
2024no pages
2025no pages
202640 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201910.34
202012.811
202610.940

Years with pages: 2019 (4), 2020 (11), 2026 (40). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Before and after

2019 to Nov 2022 against 2024 to 2026

The same measures on 15 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 40 pages from 2024 on. A change here is a change in style. It does not show how any page was written: people used every one of these words and shapes long before 2022, and SGR-011 found most of the shift across brands was a trend already under way.

Measure2019 to Nov 2022 · 15 pp2024 to 2026 · 40 ppChange
Sentence length
12.110.9−10%
Sentence rhythm
0.630.88+38%
Contractions
28.121.0−25%
"You"
69%45%−23 pts
"We"
22%41%+19 pts
Questions
8.25.1−38%
Exclamations
0.350.46+33%
Long words
20%24%+4 pts
Em dashes
1.391.44+4%
AI-associated words
0.661.39+111%
AI-era marketing words
0.421.23+196%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
0.270.60+121%
AI-associated sentence shapes
1.670.24−85%
Page length
591825+39%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (15 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (40 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

giffgaff among mobile and broadband providers

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Em dashes

    44% less than its sector

    1.45 against a sector average of 2.59; 2nd lowest of 13.

  2. Questions

    35% more than its sector

    5.8 against a sector average of 4.3; 3rd highest of 13.

  3. Contractions

    24% more than its sector

    22.8 against a sector average of 18.3; 3rd highest of 13.

Sentence length3rd lowest of 13
giffgaff 11.2
9.716.5
Contractions3rd highest of 13
giffgaff 22.8
12.725.2
"You"5th lowest of 13
giffgaff 52%
30%84%
"We"Mid-table, 7th of 13
giffgaff 34%
14%57%
Questions3rd highest of 13
giffgaff 5.8
0.97.0
Long wordsMid-table, 8th of 13
giffgaff 22%
19%31%
Em dashes2nd lowest of 13
giffgaff 1.45
0.974.72
AI-associated wordsMid-table, 7th of 13
giffgaff 1.07
0.462.88
Exclamations5th highest of 13
giffgaff 0.59
0.162.28
Page length3rd lowest of 13
giffgaff 744
5111,910

Pages measured: TalkTalk 74 · Hyperoptic 46 · Community Fibre 133 · SMARTY 183 · iD Mobile 49 · Lebara 0 · Lycamobile 112 · O2 138 · Zen Internet 186 · BT 9 · Sky 324 · Virgin Media 185 · Vodafone 172 · Three 141 · giffgaff 63. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words giffgaff uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

refurbished53.3 vs 2.2
summer40.8 vs 2.7
dashboard23.0 vs 0.5
recycling16.6 vs 0.5
members30.6 vs 2.9
fund17.8 vs 1.0
sell17.8 vs 1.1
recycle14.7 vs 0.7
fair18.1 vs 1.8
dream9.1 vs 0.4
fairer7.2 vs 0.1
giffgaffSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 63 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

06 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

2020Aug (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Just because someone has more likes than you doesn’t mean they are more liked than you.”
The joy of missing out
2020Sep (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“If you always do as you always have, you’ll always get what you always got.”
Best nan advice
2020Oct (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Ever wanted to spruce up your refurbished phone, but you weren’t sure how to? Well, good news. giffgaff has teamed up with Cassie Fairy, from the blog My Thrifty Life, to help you do just that. And with recycled materials, no less. Get in.”
How to revamp a mobile phone with DIY vinyl decals
202615 Apr · Press
“In 2026, a house without internet isn’t a home – it’s just a building where your smart speaker is nothing more than a pricey paperweight. If you’re planning to work from home on Monday morning but your broadband isn’t live, that ‘new home’ feeling evaporates pretty quickly.”
Moving home? Get your broadband sorted, stress-free
20263 Jul · Press
“At giffgaff, we’re always looking to do things better. Better mobile, better broadband, and better business practices. AKA, Doing More of the Right Thing.”
giffgaff’s Responsible Marketing Manifesto

07 · Every page

All 65 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 63 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 1 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202640 pages
202011 pages
20194 pages
In the overall numbers, no year8 pages
Not measured2 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

giffgaff's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.