{
    "id": 1079387,
    "title": "Where our orders come from: 236 orders, checked one by one",
    "slug": "where-our-orders-come-from",
    "type": "post",
    "url": "https://teas.co.uk/where-our-orders-come-from/",
    "modified": "2026-11-15T08:23:40+00:00",
    "excerpt": "We went through every paid order since 10 May 2026. Search engines sent 71, ChatGPT sent 5, and for 47 we could not tell. The full count, refunds included.",
    "content_text": "The published origin tally for 236 paid orders, 18 November 2025 to 13 November 2026, including 27 later-refunded orders. Unknown sources remain separate. Original data visualisation for teas.co.uk. View full-size chart.\nWe went through every paid order the shop has taken, 236 of them since the first on 18 November 2025, to see what brought the customer here. Search engines sent 112, ChatGPT sent 5, and for 62 the records cannot tell us. Here are the full figures.\n\nTraffic figures are easy to publish. Where orders came from is harder, because the honest answer includes a large \"we don't know\". Ours does too. This is the full count of every paid order, taken on 13 November 2026 from two records: the origin record on each order placed since 10 May 2026, and, for the 75 orders the shop took on its first version before that, what the shop platform itself recorded at checkout.\n\nThe count\nWhere the order came from10 May to 13 November 2026First version, 18 November 2025 to 9 May 2026All paid orders\nA search engine7141112\nWe could not tell471562\nTyped our address, social media and other routes91928\nOrders we entered ourselves15015\nA returning customer10not recorded10\nA link from another site, including ChatGPT808\nProbably an AI assistant101\nPaid orders16175236\n\nEach column adds up to its total. The two columns come from different records: the first version's column is what the shop platform wrote at checkout, which it did only when the buyer had accepted cookies, and it had no way to mark a returning customer. Twenty seven of the 236 orders were later refunded, 26 of them since 10 May; they stay in the count, because the question here is what brought the customer, not what we kept.\n\nGoogle sends most of them\nOf the 112 orders that began with a search, 101 came from Google, 8 from DuckDuckGo, 2 from Ecosia and one from Bing. Google has also been sending more visitors. Search Console recorded 26,445 clicks to teas.co.uk between 11 August and 10 November. In the first four weeks of that period the average was 160 clicks a day. In the last four weeks it was 468.\nThe orders followed. September brought 41 paid orders and October 36, our two best months so far. No advertising was bought for any of it.\n\nChatGPT sent five\nFive orders arrived on a link that ChatGPT showed to someone, carrying ChatGPT's own tag. For four of them our order record took the tag from the customer's first recorded visit, which began less than an hour before the order; for the fifth our server saw it on the landing request. Two of the five were later refunded. One more order probably came from an AI assistant, through a site that serves both an assistant and ordinary search, so we grade it as probable and no higher. And one customer told us on the thank you page that an assistant had sent them, although our own records show a search engine for that order.\nThat makes seven orders with some AI evidence, all since 10 May 2026; the shop platform's record of the first version shows none. It is a small number, and we would rather publish a small true number than a large hopeful one. The five tagged orders are a lower bound of orders that arrived on an assistant's tagged link. The other two are not a lower bound of anything, and someone who reads an AI answer and then types our address, or searches for us, leaves no AI trace at all. The rule behind each figure is in Room 02 of Under the Hood.\n\nThe 62 we cannot explain\nOur pages are served from a cache close to the reader, so the first page of a visit often never reaches our server, and without a tag on the link there is nothing to read later. Where that happens the order record says \"unknown\" and gives the reason. On the first version, the shop platform wrote nothing when the buyer had not accepted cookies. We do not guess, and we do not fill the gap with a favourable assumption.\n\nWhat we are doing with this\nMost people find us through a Tea Wiki guide, not a product page. So this week more than 380 guides gained a shortlist of teas that match what the guide is about, drawn from the products and brands in the range. A guide about hard water now shows the tea blended for it. A guide about taking tea on a plane now shows instant tea that needs no milk.\nWe also found that Google was still sending visitors to pages for products we no longer sell, which answered \"page not found\". Those addresses now lead to the closest thing we do sell. And the teas that are hard to find elsewhere have a shelf of their own.\nWhat this count cannot tell you\nThis count answers one question: what brought each customer here. It does not say whether they got the tea that suited them, whether a suggested extra was worth it, whether they came back because the advice was good, or whether a recommendation led to a return that could have been avoided. Those are different questions and we have not measured them yet. A purchase is not proof the customer was happy, and a link that brought a visit is not proof it caused the order. If we start counting outcomes, they will be a separate series with their own rules and dates, kept apart from these figures. What would count, and what is untested, is listed in What could prove me wrong.\nWe will run this count again and publish it, whichever way the numbers move.\n\nRelated reading: Most of the web is closing the door to AI. We opened ours. \u00b7 The giant can outspend a tea shop and still lose\n\nMethod: every paid order (completed, processing or later refunded) placed on teas.co.uk from the first on 18 November 2025 to 13 November 2026. From 10 May 2026, when our own visit records begin, the origin record on each order; that record began on 6 October 2026 and was reconstructed back to 10 May from records we already held. Before 10 May 2026, the attribution fields the shop platform wrote at checkout. Totals only; no single order is described. Search figures are from Google Search Console, 11 August to 10 November 2026.\n\nCorrected 15 November 2026. This article first counted only the 161 orders since 10 May 2026 and left out the 75 the shop took on its first version; its title said 161 orders. It also said our server saw ChatGPT's tag \"in the same visit\", where the order record read the customer's first recorded visit, and it called all seven AI orders \"a floor\", which holds only for the five tagged ones.\n\nRead next: What could prove me wrong",
    "contentSignals": "ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes",
    "links": {
        "apiCatalog": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/api-catalog",
        "llmsTxt": "https://teas.co.uk/llms.txt",
        "mcp": "https://teas.co.uk/mcp",
        "mcpSetupGuides": "https://teas.co.uk/ai/",
        "mcpCard": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json",
        "primaryAgenticRouteAuthority": "https://teas.co.uk/.well-known/teas-primary-agentic-route-authority.json"
    }
}