WooCommerce glossary
What is source type (order origin)?
Source type is the broad category of channel that brought a customer to your store before an order, such as search, another website or a tagged campaign.
How WooCommerce shows it
When order attribution is on, WooCommerce saves a source type with each order as _wc_order_attribution_source_type, and the Origin column on the Orders list is built from it. The labels you'll see include:
| Origin | What it means |
|---|---|
| Direct | No referrer and no campaign tags, for example a typed-in address or a bookmark |
| Organic | A search engine, such as Google |
| Referral | A link on another website |
| UTM-tagged source | A link carrying UTM parameters |
| Web admin | An order created by hand in WordPress admin |
| Unknown | No attribution data, for example orders placed before the feature was on or where tracking was blocked |
A worked example
Say you open last month's Orders list and count 300 orders: 120 Organic, 90 Direct, 50 from UTM-tagged email links, 25 Referral and 15 Unknown. That tells you search and email brought in more than half your orders.
Why it matters
Source type is the first split to look at when you ask "where do my orders come from?" Watch the Direct and Unknown shares: a large Direct share often hides untagged email or app traffic. WooCommerce Analytics has no report that totals these, so you'd count them from an export, a plugin or SQL. See how to see which channels bring the most orders and why attribution says Unknown.