Decoding UK Web Trends: Q4 2024

Running Consumer Browsing and Demographic data across our nationally representative UK panel of 10,500 people, three trends stood out over the final quarter of 2024: a holiday-driven surge in Fashion & Style browsing, a steady decline in Careers site visits, and a widening adoption gap between the two leading generative AI tools. As web browsing behaviour is transient and dynamic, this is now a regular quarterly research initiative tracking evolving trends in UK web activity.

What Were the Most Notable UK Web Behaviour Shifts in Q4?

This instalment takes a deep dive into two particularly intriguing website categories, Fashion & Style and Careers, which exhibited the most notable shifts in seasonal browsing behaviour during the quarter.

Fashion & Style

Driven by Black Friday and Christmas sales, the number of people browsing Fashion & Style sites (brands like Primark, ASOS, and H&M) surged to 24.7 million in December, up from 62% of UK adults aged 18-64 in October to 67% in December.

November was the inflection point, with visits per person jumping 23% month-over-month to an average of 64 visits, as shoppers eagerly sought out Black Friday deals.

Examining the demographic snapshot for December, women, younger age groups, and people with A-Levels or a degree indexed the highest, a pattern that held steady even as overall volumes swung with the shopping calendar.

Careers

Engagement with career-related sites (LinkedIn, Indeed, TotalJobs) saw a sharp decline as the holidays approached. Visitor numbers fell from 13.8 million in October to 11.9 million in December, a 14% drop in total reach, while average visits per person fell even further, down 31% over the same period, as job hunting took a back seat to time with loved ones.

Careers browsing was fairly balanced by gender but concentrated among 18-34 year-olds and university graduates, with London the strongest regional market at an index of i115 against the national average. This macro-level view is especially valuable for marketers looking to correlate seasonal trends with their own site traffic and benchmark performance against competitors.

Benchmarking Generative AI Tool Usage in the UK

With rapid advances in artificial intelligence continuing into 2025, we set out to understand how tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are being used across the UK. In December, 7.6% (2.8 million) of the UK online population aged 18-56 accessed ChatGPT via the web, while 1.6% (595,000) used Google Gemini.

ChatGPT was used by 4.6 times as many people as Google Gemini, underlining the impact of its early head start and brand recognition, even as the gap between the two continues to narrow.

Both tools are most popular among younger age groups, but a clear gender gap stands out: men are significantly more likely to use ChatGPT (i115 versus i86 for women), and the gap is wider still for Google Gemini (i162 for men versus just i42 for women).

People with a university degree indexed higher on both platforms than those with lower or no qualifications, and London emerged as the highest-indexing region in the UK, at i143 for ChatGPT and i131 for Google Gemini.

How Can I Access This Data?

We used Gener8's Consumer Browsing and Demographic datasets via a UK Nationally Representative cohort connected to IAB Domain Classification to uncover the trends behind UK browsing behaviour. Get in touch to see how the same panel can benchmark your own category or audience.