Brands over time

Zurich
over time

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

149 of Zurich's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2017 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 21 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
149
Years covered
2017–26
Archived before ChatGPT
21
Blog · press
138 · 11

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Zurich's homepage from 2000 to 2023, 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.

2023zurich.co.uk30 Jun 2023
Zurich homepage, 30 Jun 2023

Screenshot of Zurich’s homepage (zurich.co.uk) as archived by the Internet Archive on 30 Jun 2023. © Zurich or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Zurich.

Homepage

2023

“Daily life reassurance”

Page title

Zurich Insurance UK – Personal, Business & Public Sector

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2013Car insurance made simple
  2. 2016Britain chooses to leave the EU
  3. 2017Up to £75 in vouchers when you buy life cover online
  4. 201899% of insurance claims paid
  5. 2019Looking for insurance?
  6. 2023Daily life reassurance

20 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
7.5
10.8
14.7
12.2
10.2
16.2
14.5
14.0
13.0
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
2015no pages
2016no pages
20171 pp
20182 pp
201918 pp
2020no pages
20213 pp
20222 pp
20234 pp
202414 pp
202511 pp
20266 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
20177.51
201810.82
201914.718
202112.23
202210.22
202316.24
202414.514
202514.011
202613.06

Years with pages: 2017 (1), 2018 (2), 2019 (18), 2021 (3), 2022 (2), 2023 (4), 2024 (14), 2025 (11), 2026 (6). 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 23 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 31 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 · 23 pp2024 to 2026 · 31 ppChange
Sentence length
14.014.0+0%
Sentence rhythm
0.740.77+3%
Contractions
13.08.8−32%
"You"
64%47%−17 pts
"We"
36%52%+16 pts
Questions
3.01.6−45%
Exclamations
0.070.14+87%
Long words
25%32%+6 pts
Em dashes
1.491.42−5%
AI-associated words
0.111.35+1139%
AI-era marketing words
0.001.16–
Quieter LLM-favoured words
2.406.37+165%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.080.29+254%
Page length
733920+25%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (23 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (31 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Zurich 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. "We"

    55% more than its sector

    44% against a sector average of 28%; 2nd highest of 10.

  2. Contractions

    47% less than its sector

    9.6 against a sector average of 18.1; lowest of 10.

  3. Em dashes

    42% less than its sector

    1.26 against a sector average of 2.18; lowest of 10.

Sentence lengthMid-table, 6th of 10
Zurich 13.6
10.517.1
ContractionsLowest of 10
Zurich 9.6
9.625.3
"You"3rd lowest of 10
Zurich 54%
43%88%
"We"2nd highest of 10
Zurich 44%
10%52%
QuestionsLowest of 10
Zurich 2.7
2.75.8
Long wordsHighest of 10
Zurich 29%
19%29%
Em dashesLowest of 10
Zurich 1.26
1.263.84
AI-associated words2nd highest of 10
Zurich 0.89
0.161.23
Exclamations3rd lowest of 10
Zurich 0.17
0.041.11
Page length2nd lowest of 10
Zurich 851
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.

05 · Vocabulary

Words Zurich 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.

risk100.5 vs 22.0
insights34.2 vs 2.1
authorities22.2 vs 0.5
charities20.6 vs 0.5
claims61.6 vs 14.5
cyber19.0 vs 1.3
resilience14.5 vs 0.9
charity15.3 vs 1.2
councils12.4 vs 0.2
schools10.4 vs 0.5
safety27.5 vs 5.9
safeguarding9.0 vs 0.2
ZurichSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 149 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.

202123 Jun · Blog
“530,000 properties in England face a more extreme risk of flooding than official maps suggest, according to Zurich UK. In this article we discuss different ways to check your flood risk when buying a new home.”
Buying a new home? Eight ways to check your flood risk
202416 Jun · Blog
“Summer is the season of sport and this year is massive. Sport fans will be soaking up as much of the action as possible, with the European Football Championship in Germany, major tennis finals, and of course the biggest sporting event of all taking centre stage in Paris (among other great events).”
How the climate is shaking up our summer of sport
202616 Jun · Blog
“Insurance can often be looked upon as a rigid process, very technical and very black and white. But for customers, the experience of making an insurance claim isn’t just about the outcome, it’s about how they are treated during what is often a stressful, emotional or uncertain time.”
More than a claim: How customer wellbeing is transforming insurance

07 · Every page

All 156 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 149 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 6 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20266 pages
202511 pages
202414 pages
20234 pages
20222 pages
20213 pages
201918 pages
20182 pages
20171 page
In the overall numbers, no year88 pages
Not measured7 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Zurich'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?.