Brands over time

O2
over time

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

138 of O2's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2017 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 56 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
138
Years covered
2017–26
Archived before ChatGPT
56
Blog · press
137 · 1

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

O2'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.

2026o2.co.uk30 Jun 2026
O2 homepage, 30 Jun 2026

Screenshot of O2’s homepage (o2.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2026. © O2 or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by O2.

Homepage

2026

“iPhone 17 Pro Max – Save up to £443”

Page title

O2 - Essential For Living

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2006Free Samsung Z320i
  2. 2009Find your perfect free sim
  3. 2016Sell devices for cash
  4. 2019Save up to £125 on the stellar iPhone XR
  5. 2022O2 \| Mobile Phones, Mobile Broadband & Sim Only Deals
  6. 2026iPhone 17 Pro Max – Save up to £443

25 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
9.1
11.0
10.8
10.0
13.0
8.8
11.1
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
20175 pp
20181 pp
201938 pp
20206 pp
20211 pp
20225 pp
2023no pages
2024no pages
2025no pages
20261 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
20179.15
201811.01
201910.838
202010.06
202113.01
20228.85
202611.11

Years with pages: 2017 (5), 2018 (1), 2019 (38), 2020 (6), 2021 (1), 2022 (5), 2026 (1). 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

O2 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. Questions

    63% more than its sector

    7.0 against a sector average of 4.3; highest of 13.

  2. "We"

    32% less than its sector

    23% against a sector average of 34%; 5th lowest of 13.

  3. "You"

    21% more than its sector

    73% against a sector average of 60%; 5th highest of 13.

Sentence length2nd lowest of 13
O2 11.0
9.716.5
Contractions5th highest of 13
O2 21.4
12.725.2
"You"5th highest of 13
O2 73%
30%84%
"We"5th lowest of 13
O2 23%
14%57%
QuestionsHighest of 13
O2 7.0
0.97.0
Long words4th lowest of 13
O2 21%
19%31%
Em dashesMid-table, 6th of 13
O2 2.91
0.974.72
AI-associated words3rd lowest of 13
O2 0.83
0.462.88
ExclamationsLowest of 13
O2 0.16
0.162.28
Page length3rd highest of 13
O2 1,151
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.

04 · Vocabulary

Words O2 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.

quality58.7 vs 5.8
shop43.9 vs 2.3
blocked40.8 vs 5.8
find76.6 vs 20.4
browsing47.3 vs 8.6
parent17.7 vs 0.5
cdn17.3 vs 1.1
yes29.7 vs 5.3
analyse16.5 vs 1.1
aged17.3 vs 0.4
optimizely17.3 vs 1.5
inspiration15.1 vs 0.6
O2Sector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 138 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.

2017Mar (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Relieve yourself of any guilt from the inevitable overindulgence later on. Pop your trainers on and away you go. Your smartwatch will track your activity levels, calories burnt, heart rate and more. So you don't need your laptop to figure out how much work you've put in.”
O2
2017Apr (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“Well, it's not quite as simple as that. Because it all depends on who you are and what you're into. Work out which one of these is most like you and then check out the phone we recommend for your lifestyle.”
O2
2019Sep (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“What makes a motorway smart? No, that’s not the opening line of a joke – it’s a genuine question. As Britain’s motorways are upgraded to 'smart' status, here's what that means for us as drivers.”
How smart motorways keep drivers moving
2020Sep (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“We want to make sure technology adds to the lives of families and young people, through better online safety, healthier digital habits, and sharing magical moments together.”
Living better with tech
2026 · Blog
“Finding a great phone shouldn’t put your budget at risk. That’s why we’ve put together a handy guide to help you find a phone that offers both value and performance.”
Best Cheap Phones 2026

06 · Every page

All 141 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 138 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (2 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.

20261 page
20225 pages
20211 page
20206 pages
  • Living better with techby Sep 2020 · blog · 1,250 words · archived
  • O2by Sep 2020 · blog · 598 words · archived
  • O2by Sep 2020 · blog · 688 words · archived
  • Freestyle Hubby Sep 2020 · blog · 331 words · archived
  • O2by Sep 2020 · blog · 1,150 words · archived
  • O2by Aug 2020 · blog · 932 words · archived
201938 pages
20181 page
  • O2by Jan 2018 · blog · 1,048 words · archived
20175 pages
  • O2by Apr 2017 · blog · 1,349 words · archived
  • O2by Mar 2017 · blog · 850 words · archived
  • O2by Mar 2017 · blog · 785 words · archived
  • O2by Mar 2017 · blog · 1,064 words · archived
  • O2by Mar 2017 · blog · 994 words · archived
In the overall numbers, no year81 pages
Not measured3 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

O2'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?.