Brands over time

Xero
over time

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

328 of Xero's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 92 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 15 other software companies, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
328
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
92
Blog · press
170 · 158

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Xero's homepage from 2007 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.

2026xero.com30 Jun 2026
Xero homepage, 30 Jun 2026

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

Homepage

2026

“Join over 4.9 million customers using Xero”

Page title

Accounting Software for Small Businesses | Xero US

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2007It's about time. Connected, simple, secure. Quite simply, Xero is the accounting system you've always wanted.
  2. 2010Accounting for your small business
  3. 2015Xero is online accounting software for your small business
  4. 2017Online accounting software for your small business
  5. 2022Try accounting software for everyday business
  6. 2026Join over 4.9 million customers using Xero

19 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
Software avg 13.3
16.6
16.0
11.0
11.3
10.7
10.6
15.8
14.7
16.2
16.1
15.3
14.4
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20157 pp
20167 pp
20177 pp
20188 pp
20198 pp
202011 pp
202133 pp
202236 pp
20238 pp
20249 pp
202514 pp
202616 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201516.67
201616.07
201711.07
201811.38
201910.78
202010.611
202115.833
202214.736
202316.28
202416.19
202515.314
202614.416

Years with pages: 2015 (7), 2016 (7), 2017 (7), 2018 (8), 2019 (8), 2020 (11), 2021 (33), 2022 (36), 2023 (8), 2024 (9), 2025 (14), 2026 (16). 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 88 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 39 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 · 88 pp2024 to 2026 · 39 ppChange
Sentence length
14.215.1+6%
Sentence rhythm
0.760.68−11%
Contractions
13.910.9−21%
"You"
51%50%−1 pts
"We"
44%44%−0 pts
Questions
2.01.6−22%
Exclamations
0.160.02−87%
Long words
28%31%+3 pts
Em dashes
2.933.94+34%
AI-associated words
0.801.94+144%
AI-era marketing words
0.741.51+105%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
1.983.62+82%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.160.46+190%
Page length
9301,278+37%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (88 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (39 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Xero among software companies

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. Contractions

    6% less than its sector

    14.4 against a sector average of 15.4; 6th lowest of 16.

  2. Em dashes

    6% less than its sector

    2.86 against a sector average of 3.04; mid-table, 7th of 16.

  3. Sentence length

    6% more than its sector

    14.0 against a sector average of 13.3; 5th highest of 16.

Sentence length5th highest of 16
Xero 14.0
10.415.7
Contractions6th lowest of 16
Xero 14.4
8.519.6
"You"6th lowest of 16
Xero 60%
39%78%
"We"Mid-table, 7th of 16
Xero 33%
12%49%
QuestionsMid-table, 7th of 16
Xero 3.2
1.65.1
Long wordsMid-table, 9th of 16
Xero 28%
23%34%
Em dashesMid-table, 7th of 16
Xero 2.86
0.216.56
AI-associated words2nd lowest of 16
Xero 1.09
1.033.27
ExclamationsLowest of 16
Xero 0.15
0.155.13
Page length6th highest of 16
Xero 1,544
7403,377

Pages measured: FreeAgent 266 · GoCardless 217 · Xero 328 · Sage 229 · Intercom 204 · HubSpot 190 · Canva 203 · Figma 222 · ClickUp 203 · Miro 14 · Notion 30 · Slack 270 · Asana 223 · monday.com 266 · Airtable 299 · Mailchimp 258. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words Xero 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.

small112.5 vs 13.2
accounting54.2 vs 5.9
tax64.2 vs 9.7
cash42.0 vs 4.5
income32.4 vs 3.8
accountant18.5 vs 1.4
payroll20.2 vs 2.0
bookkeeping15.3 vs 0.9
profit15.2 vs 1.6
money17.8 vs 2.8
owners16.1 vs 2.6
invoice15.5 vs 2.7
XeroSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 328 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.

2015 · BlogArchived copy
“How will you stand apart in today’s highly competitive marketplace, where businesses one-up each other for new talent? Can you find employees who will enjoy their work, stay longer than a year or two, and become advocates for your business?”
How to keep your staff happy & motivated
2018Mar (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“You know you can help companies throughout the different stages of their growth. From business plans to company formation, loan applications to tax audits, a partner like you makes life easier. You can improve any company's business prospects – every step of the way.”
Promote Your Value to the Client
2019Jul (archived by) · AnnouncementArchived copy
“Introducing an all-new tax workflow solution to automate the compliance process for advisors during tax season. Tax Mapper allows you to seamlessly map client data from Xero to your preferred tax software in a few easy clicks. US tax mapping in Xero supports Schedule C, E, S Corp, Partnerships, and C Corp.”
Xerocon in Review: Product Announcements
2021 · Press
“Xero Analytics Plus gives every small business access to powerful insights that help them understand where they are now, and where they might be in the future. It combines advanced cash flow predictions with insightful business reporting, all within Xero.”
Xero News August 2021

07 · Every page

All 333 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 328 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose, 4 same text as an earlier page from this brand). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202616 pages
202514 pages
20249 pages
20238 pages
202236 pages
202133 pages
202011 pages
20198 pages
20188 pages
20177 pages
20167 pages
20157 pages
In the overall numbers, no year164 pages
Not measured5 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Xero'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?.