Brands over time

Hastings Direct
over time

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

146 of Hastings Direct's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2022, measured sentence by sentence, 58 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 9 other insurers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
146
Years covered
2015–22
Archived before ChatGPT
58
Blog · press
146 · 0

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Hastings Direct's homepage from 2001 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.

2026hastingsdirect.com12 Jun 2026
Hastings Direct homepage, 12 Jun 2026

Screenshot of Hastings Direct’s homepage (hastingsdirect.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 12 Jun 2026. © Hastings Direct or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Hastings Direct.

Homepage

2026

“Making insurance simple”

Page title

Hastings Direct | Simplicity Is The Best Policy

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2009Let us help you get a great deal with your business insurance
  2. 2012Insurance from Hastings Direct
  3. 2015Managing your account
  4. 2020Tried MyAccount yet?
  5. 2022Hastings Direct car insurance
  6. 2026Making insurance simple

23 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.
6
12
18
Insurance avg 13.6
15.7
17.6
15.3
14.2
9.1
12.0
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
20161 pp
2017no pages
2018no pages
201936 pp
202013 pp
20212 pp
20224 pp
2023no pages
2024no pages
2025no pages
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201515.71
201617.61
201915.336
202014.213
20219.12
202212.04

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2016 (1), 2019 (36), 2020 (13), 2021 (2), 2022 (4). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Against its sector

Hastings Direct among insurers

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

    76% more than its sector

    3.84 against a sector average of 2.18; highest of 10.

  2. "We"

    64% less than its sector

    10% against a sector average of 28%; lowest of 10.

  3. Contractions

    38% more than its sector

    25.0 against a sector average of 18.1; 2nd highest of 10.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 5th of 10
Hastings Direct 13.8
10.517.1
Contractions2nd highest of 10
Hastings Direct 25.0
9.625.3
"You"3rd highest of 10
Hastings Direct 87%
43%88%
"We"Lowest of 10
Hastings Direct 10%
10%52%
QuestionsMid-table, 5th of 10
Hastings Direct 4.8
2.75.8
Long words3rd lowest of 10
Hastings Direct 19%
19%29%
Em dashesHighest of 10
Hastings Direct 3.84
1.263.84
AI-associated words4th lowest of 10
Hastings Direct 0.42
0.161.23
Exclamations3rd highest of 10
Hastings Direct 0.76
0.041.11
Page length3rd lowest of 10
Hastings Direct 922
8411,707

Pages measured: Aviva 273 · Direct Line 191 · Admiral 238 · LV= 305 · AXA 186 · Hastings Direct 146 · esure 133 · Legal & General 286 · Zurich 149 · Bupa 142. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Hastings Direct 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.

car284.2 vs 57.4
driving77.7 vs 11.6
test38.2 vs 5.5
you're53.5 vs 11.5
don't30.1 vs 4.2
road40.8 vs 7.8
you'll27.6 vs 3.6
mot23.4 vs 2.5
vehicle41.1 vs 8.6
telematics14.8 vs 0.4
tyre18.8 vs 1.7
it's52.9 vs 14.0
Hastings DirectSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 146 pages. Product names and page furniture filtered automatically; list not yet reviewed.

05 · 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.

2015Sep (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Telematics car insurance policies work by monitoring a driver's habits behind the wheel and adjusting insurance costs accordingly. It's designed to reward safe drivers and offer savings that really add up over the years, ideal for young, low mileage and new drivers.”
Guide to Telematics Insurance
2015Sep (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Telematics car insurance policies work by monitoring a driver's habits behind the wheel and adjusting insurance costs accordingly. It's designed to reward safe drivers and offer savings that really add up over the years, ideal for young, low mileage and new drivers.”
Guide to Telematics Insurance
2019Jul (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“You've spent countless hours behind the wheel, mastered all the necessary manoeuvres and passed your theory test. Now there's just one thing standing in the way of you and the open road: your practical driving test.”
Driving Test Tips
2020Oct (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“When you have kids, it seems there's an endless list of things to sort out. But one task that can't be put off is making sure your little one has the right child car seat.”
Your guide to baby car seats from Hastings Direct
202611 Mar · Blog
“It pays to look after your car. From checking your tyre pressure and brake pads to your oil and lights, making small checks now could save you time (and money) later on.”
Car maintenance checklist
202610 Jul · Blog
“Is your car at risk of being stolen or broken into? Find out how to protect your vehicle with our practical security tips.”
Car Security Tips

06 · Every page

All 146 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 146 count towards the measures. Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20224 pages
20212 pages
202013 pages
201936 pages
20161 page
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year89 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Hastings Direct'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?.