Brands over time

Lidl
over time

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

83 of Lidl's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2017 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 29 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 9 other supermarkets, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
83
Years covered
2017–26
Archived before ChatGPT
29
Blog · press
0 · 83

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Lidl's homepage from 2002 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.

2026lidl.co.uk2 Jul 2026
Lidl homepage, 2 Jul 2026

Screenshot of Lidl’s homepage (lidl.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 2 Jul 2026. © Lidl or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Lidl.

Homepage

2026

“Check out our weekly offers!”

Page title

Food, Non-food, Wine and Recipes | Lidl GB

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2013Your Post CodeSelect Store
  2. 2022Which? cheapest basket may 2022
  3. 2023Weekly Food Offers
  4. 2024Great deals at your local store!
  5. 2025Check out our weekly offers!

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.
8
16
24
Supermarkets avg 16.0
16.9
16.9
16.0
17.9
19.5
18.2
19.5
18.6
18.3
19.2
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
20172 pp
20181 pp
20194 pp
20207 pp
20219 pp
20229 pp
20231 pp
20243 pp
20255 pp
20264 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201716.92
201816.91
201916.04
202017.97
202119.59
202218.29
202319.51
202418.63
202518.35
202619.24

Years with pages: 2017 (2), 2018 (1), 2019 (4), 2020 (7), 2021 (9), 2022 (9), 2023 (1), 2024 (3), 2025 (5), 2026 (4). 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 29 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 12 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 · 29 pp2024 to 2026 · 12 ppChange
Sentence length
18.218.7+2%
Sentence rhythm
0.700.68−4%
Contractions
9.411.8+25%
"You"
5%10%+4 pts
"We"
89%78%−11 pts
Questions
0.00.4–
Exclamations
0.231.41+512%
Long words
29%27%−2 pts
Em dashes
1.262.03+61%
AI-associated words
0.941.08+15%
AI-era marketing words
0.250.18−27%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
1.420.79−44%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.100.33+223%
Page length
725796+10%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (29 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (12 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Lidl among supermarkets

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. Questions

    85% less than its sector

    0.1 against a sector average of 1.0; lowest of 8.

  2. "You"

    55% less than its sector

    8% against a sector average of 17%; mid-table, 5th of 8.

  3. Em dashes

    53% less than its sector

    1.06 against a sector average of 2.26; lowest of 8.

Sentence length3rd highest of 8
Lidl 17.6
8.021.2
Contractions3rd lowest of 8
Lidl 10.6
8.521.5
"You"Mid-table, 5th of 8
Lidl 8%
5%58%
"We"3rd highest of 8
Lidl 88%
31%90%
QuestionsLowest of 8
Lidl 0.1
0.13.3
Long words3rd highest of 8
Lidl 29%
22%33%
Em dashesLowest of 8
Lidl 1.06
1.064.20
AI-associated words2nd lowest of 8
Lidl 1.01
0.441.85
Exclamations3rd highest of 8
Lidl 0.78
0.141.21
Page length3rd lowest of 8
Lidl 663
3363,070

Pages measured: Tesco 104 · Sainsbury's 60 · Asda 11 · Morrisons 67 · Aldi 1 · Lidl 83 · Ocado 73 · Co-op 183 · Iceland 36 · Booths 2. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words Lidl 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.

britain30.1 vs 1.9
healthy42.7 vs 6.6
employees23.7 vs 1.7
british50.5 vs 10.0
supermarket44.6 vs 8.7
healthier27.1 vs 3.8
tea17.9 vs 2.0
supply45.2 vs 11.6
scotland16.7 vs 2.2
LidlSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 83 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.

201721 Mar · PressArchived copy
“21 March 2017: Lidl UK, Britain’s fastest-growing supermarket, has signed the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) ‘Back British Farming Charter’.”
LIDL UK BACKS BRITISH FARMING
201815 Feb · PressArchived copy
“15 February 2018: Lidl, the UK’s fastest growing supermarket, has today reached a major milestone with the opening of five new stores, which takes its total store count in Great Britain to 700.”
LIDL UK CREATES 700 NEW JOBS AS IT REACHES 700 STORES
20193 Jan · Press
“3rd January 2019: Lidl UK has today announced that it has launched its Grassroots Dairy Partnership, with Müller Milk & Ingredients, which marks the latest development in their work together to secure a sustainable end-to-end dairy supply chain, from the grassroots through to the customer.”
LIDL UK ANNOUNCES GRASSROOTS DAIRY PARTNERSHIP WITH MÜLLER
2021 · PressArchived copy
“29th July 2021: Lidl GB has today announced it has removed over one billion pieces of plastic from stores across Great Britain as part of its strategy to eliminate plastic waste and support the continued reduction of plastic globally.”
LIDL GB REMOVES ONE BILLION PIECES OF PLASTIC

07 · Every page

All 86 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 83 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 2 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20264 pages
20255 pages
20243 pages
20231 page
20229 pages
20219 pages
20207 pages
20194 pages
20181 page
20172 pages
In the overall numbers, no year38 pages
Not measured3 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Lidl'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?.