Brands over time

Vodafone
over time

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

172 of Vodafone's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 81 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
172
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
81
Blog · press
117 · 55

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Vodafone'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.

2026vodafone.co.uk30 Jun 2026
Vodafone homepage, 30 Jun 2026

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

Homepage

2026

“Offers for you”

Page title

Vodafone - Our Best Ever Network | Now With 5G

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2007The internet is now mobile
  2. 2008New Sony Ericsson C902
  3. 2011Welcome to Vodafone UK online
  4. 2016The Vodafone difference
  5. 2021You might like
  6. 2026Offers for you

21 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
Telecoms avg 13.2
17.2
16.5
10.1
11.3
10.2
12.3
15.1
6.2
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20151 pp
2016no pages
20172 pp
20184 pp
201943 pp
20207 pp
202110 pp
202217 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
201517.21
201716.52
201810.14
201911.343
202010.27
202112.310
202215.117
20266.21

Years with pages: 2015 (1), 2017 (2), 2018 (4), 2019 (43), 2020 (7), 2021 (10), 2022 (17), 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

Vodafone 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

    36% less than its sector

    2.8 against a sector average of 4.3; 3rd lowest of 13.

  2. Contractions

    31% less than its sector

    12.7 against a sector average of 18.3; lowest of 13.

  3. Long words

    28% more than its sector

    31% against a sector average of 24%; highest of 13.

Sentence lengthLowest of 13
Vodafone 9.7
9.716.5
ContractionsLowest of 13
Vodafone 12.7
12.725.2
"You"3rd lowest of 13
Vodafone 51%
30%84%
"We"4th highest of 13
Vodafone 42%
14%57%
Questions3rd lowest of 13
Vodafone 2.8
0.97.0
Long wordsHighest of 13
Vodafone 31%
19%31%
Em dashesMid-table, 7th of 13
Vodafone 2.86
0.974.72
AI-associated words2nd highest of 13
Vodafone 2.20
0.462.88
Exclamations4th lowest of 13
Vodafone 0.22
0.162.28
Page length4th highest of 13
Vodafone 1,121
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 Vodafone 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.

business308.2 vs 24.7
employees83.5 vs 3.1
call77.1 vs 8.7
social74.2 vs 8.8
solutions43.1 vs 2.3
public42.8 vs 3.9
businesses55.9 vs 8.7
sector31.8 vs 1.1
small38.7 vs 5.2
security53.1 vs 11.2
support62.0 vs 15.0
help89.9 vs 30.5
VodafoneSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 172 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.

2018Aug (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“4G mobile internet has well and truly arrived in the UK, and enabling technologies like cloud computing and the Internet of Things are becoming more mainstream.”
The Digital Impact on Buying Behaviour
2019Jul (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“The Social Tech Trust is one of the UK’s leading investors in socially motivated tech, providing grant funding and support to organisations that use technology to transform lives. They’ve just joined forces with us to support a new UK social innovation award, Vodafone Techstarter.”
How social purpose is driving UK innovation
202212 Jan · PressArchived copy
“More people than ever shopped online over this Christmas period. In November 2020, one-in-three retail sales was made online, up from one-in-five the year before, according to the Office for National Statistics.”
Vodafone blocks Christmas fraudsters with new security measures
20263 Mar · Press
“Different Grand Theft Auto games are available across a number of gaming platforms. The latest online version (GTA V / GTA Online) is available on consoles such as PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Older, single-player versions of the game can be played on mobile devices e.g. Android.”
Grand Theft Auto Parental Controls
202614 Sep · Press
“In the app a user can access a set of children’s videos from KidsTube – some videos are free but full access requires a paid membership. The ‘Play Zone’ includes virtual prizes as rewards for children who complete tasks such as watching a video. The JusTalk Kids app does not have adverts.”
JusTalk Kids Parental Controls

06 · Every page

All 222 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 172 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (43 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose, 7 under 150 words of text). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20261 page
202217 pages
202110 pages
20207 pages
201943 pages
20184 pages
20172 pages
20151 page
In the overall numbers, no year87 pages
Not measured50 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Vodafone'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?.