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Tropical Fish Co started in spring 2026 with no history, no links and no reviews. We built it from nothing and run everything: the storefront, the SEO, the delivery messages, the assistant on the website, WhatsApp and the phone. Six months later it averages position 5.0 on Google, takes 9 times the orders it did in its first full month, is cited in AI answers and sells to shoppers sent by ChatGPT. A young independent shop growing that fast is the real test of the method; an established brand would hide it. Here is the whole system, with the numbers from Google.
Tropical Fish Co is run by Hand On Web’s founder. That is why we can show every system end to end, from the first search to the courier scan, with nothing hidden behind a client’s confidentiality. Read it as our own work, not a customer’s review of us.
Tropical Fish Co
A new shop starts with no history, no links and no reviews. This is what the first six months looked like in Google Search Console.
| Month | Clicks | Impressions | Avg. position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 26 | 150 | 7,680 | 25.15 |
| May 26 | 731 | 37,465 | 25.43 |
| Jun 26 | 1,790 | 92,817 | 15.41 |
| Jul 26 | 4,936 | 427,345 | 7.31 |
| Aug 26 | 9,752 | 802,680 | 7.67 |
| Sept 26 | 13,546 | 1,154,725 | 5.45 |
| Oct 26 (to the 23rd) | 10,361 | 1,009,980 | 4.99 |
Apr 26
150 clicks · position 25.1
The shop goes live. Google starts showing it, mostly on page three.
May 26
731 clicks · position 25.4
Impressions grow almost five-fold as more of the catalogue shows in search. Still page three on average.
Jun 26
1,790 clicks · position 15.4
Through Google’s May core update the average jumps to page two.
Jul 26
4,936 clicks · position 7.3
Onto page one on average. Clicks nearly triple.
Aug 26
9,752 clicks · position 7.7
Clicks double again, with the average holding on page one.
Sept 26
13,546 clicks · position 5.5
The best full month so far, at an average position of 5.5.
Oct 26 (to the 23rd)
10,361 clicks · position 5.0
Month to 23 October: the average is under 5.
Clicks are not the point; orders are. Google Analytics recorded 13 orders in May 2026, the shop’s first full month, and 120 in September 2026: 9 times as many, for a shop that did not exist in March. Every one of those orders is a box of live animals packed by hand and delivered on a confirmed day, not a parcel off a shelf. 67% of purchases over the last 90 days came from organic search, so the shop is not buying its growth; paid social and free Google Shopping listings are live too, kept small on purpose while organic does the work.
Share of purchases, Google Analytics 4, 26 July–23 October 2026. Shares of purchases in Google Analytics 4. Order counts come from the same property; we publish counts and shares, not sales values.
Over 90 days the shop had 34,912 Google clicks, 5.6 times the 90 days before, and its average position moved from 10.5 to 5.9. In the latest 28 days clicks held level (−2.4%) while impressions rose 12% and the average position improved again, from 5.66 to 4.97.
This period: 26 September–23 October 2026
Previous: 29 August–25 September 2026
| Metric | Previous | This period |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 12,959 | 12,651 |
| Impressions | 1,071,745 | 1,203,258 |
| Click-through rate | 1.21% | 1.05% |
| Average position | 5.66 | 4.97 |
Clicks: −2.4%. A lower average position means higher up the page.
This period: 26 September–23 October 2026
Previous: 29 August–25 September 2026
| Metric | Previous | This period |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 10,969 | 10,576 |
| Impressions | 392,156 | 456,900 |
| Click-through rate | 2.80% | 2.31% |
| Average position | 7.57 | 6.50 |
Clicks: −3.6%. A lower average position means higher up the page.
This period: 26 July–23 October 2026
Previous: 27 April–25 July 2026
| Metric | Previous | This period |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 6,243 | 34,912 |
| Impressions | 459,502 | 3,067,797 |
| Click-through rate | 1.36% | 1.14% |
| Average position | 10.53 | 5.94 |
Clicks: +459.2%. A lower average position means higher up the page.
This period: 26 July–23 October 2026
Previous: 27 April–25 July 2026
| Metric | Previous | This period |
|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 5,625 | 29,628 |
| Impressions | 172,081 | 1,142,789 |
| Click-through rate | 3.27% | 2.59% |
| Average position | 16.81 | 7.85 |
Clicks: +426.7%. A lower average position means higher up the page.
“buy betta fish” went from position 12 to 6.6, and “buy live fish online uk free delivery” from 20 to 6.5.
| Search | Clicks before | Clicks now | Position before | Position now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tropical fish for sale | 19 | 51 | 16.5 | 14.2 |
| buy betta fish | 3 | 18 | 12.0 | 6.6 |
| discus fish for sale near me | 13 | 22 | 11.1 | 5.9 |
| buy live fish online uk free delivery | 1 | 10 | 20.0 | 6.5 |
| shell dwellers for sale | 2 | 11 | 7.5 | 3.9 |
All countries, all devices. Before: 29 August–25 September 2026. Now: 26 September–23 October 2026. Brand searches left out.
The shop has been through a core update and three spam updates. Its average position was better after each one than before it.
| Google update | Position before | Position after | Clicks after vs before |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 core update21 May–2 June | 29.4 | 13.0 | +153.8% |
| June 2026 spam update24–26 June | 17.5 | 7.6 | +85.0% |
| August 2026 spam update18–20 August | 8.4 | 6.5 | +91.1% |
| September 2026 spam update24 September–7 October | 5.4 | 5.0 | −2.8% |
The 14 days before each update started against the 14 days after it finished, all countries. Update dates from Google’s Search Status Dashboard. Seasons and stock also move these numbers, so read them as a pattern, not proof of cause.
No two shops are alike, so we do not run a template or follow the generic advice an assistant gives everyone. Tropical Fish Co is the fullest record we have of the method, because it is run by our founder and there is no client confidentiality in the way.
Search Console by query and page and Analytics by channel, device and purchase, through the APIs, every day. The audits on this page all started as a number that looked wrong.
Live UK search results, keyword demand and competitor rankings from paid providers, plus AI-answer tracking. We know which shop outranks us for which search, and we buy a search result only when the free data cannot decide.
1,711 conversations with Aqua across the website, WhatsApp and the phone, the searches typed into the shop, the emails and the reviews. Missing facts and unclear pages show up here first.
One change at a time, dated, then read against orders. The delivery-date test below is the honest version of this: it lost orders, so it was reversed in nine days and a test now stops it coming back.
Apr 2026
Every product page carries its scientific name, supplied size, care facts and structured data from day one. Google started with the shop on page three.
30 Apr 2026
The questions it is asked, 1,170 website conversations and counting, tell us which facts are missing from the pages.
21 Jun 2026
Search Console, Analytics, Cloudflare and live UK search results together: 20% of searches were split across two of the shop’s own pages, and phones completed checkout far less often than desktops. Both became projects.
2 Jul 2026
Step-by-step tracking in the Shopify pixel, so we could see where phone buyers dropped out instead of guessing. Orders per mobile session are up 23% since June.
20 Aug 2026
The homepage was fetching over 220 route payloads before a visitor tapped anything; big category pages sent 1.4 MB of hidden links. Both fixed. Today the shop loads in 1.5 seconds at the 75th percentile on phones.
22–23 Aug 2026
One assistant across every channel, with the same shop data and the same rules.
13 Sep 2026
The dates in the checkout rates are now rewritten every hour by a script with a failure alert, instead of by hand every Friday.
22 Sep 2026
We tried showing the exact delivery date on product pages and in the basket. Orders dropped. Nine days later it went back to the checkout only, and a test now stops it coming back.
25 Sep 2026
Tank size, temperament and experience filter live stock with confirmed care data. A shortlist to check, not a stocking plan.
17–18 Oct 2026
Packs priced from the supplier costs and the order history, with delivery included on the ones that ship free. A 5% welcome code on everything.
20–21 Oct 2026
The messaging chain and the assistants were tested against prompt injection before the courier updates went live. From 21 October every order gets a text and an email at each courier stage.
Now
A follow-up call after delivery, asking how the fish arrived and whether anything needs putting right, is being rolled out.
People buying live fish want to know if it suits their tank, how to look after it and when it will arrive. Most of them are on a phone: 78% of the shop’s Google clicks come from mobiles. We built the shop to answer that on every page, which is also what Google and AI assistants look for.
Shopify runs the checkout, stock and orders. On top of it we built the shop’s own front end: the design, navigation, category and product pages, all under our control and fast on a phone.
Fish grouped the way people search, from “betta” and “discus” to Lake Malawi mbuna and nano-tank fish. The betta, discus and guppy pages bring in the most Google clicks.
Product pages carry structured data for the product, its offer, delivery times and returns policy, plus their own FAQs, so Google and AI assistants can read the facts directly.
Care guides, tank-size guides such as “best fish for a 60 litre tank” and species pages answer the questions people ask before they buy. Several of them rank on their own.
Tank-volume, stocking, water-parameter and compatibility calculators, and a finder that filters live stock by tank size, temperament and experience.
78% of the shop’s Google clicks come from phones, where it averages position 4.6.
Google showed 4,569 different pages from the shop in search over the last 90 days. For 33,970 of the 37,062 different searches it appeared for in the last 28 days, its average position was in the top 10. DataForSEO counts 5,438 UK keywords for the shop, 581 of them in the top 10.
A live-fish shop is judged on what happens after the click. These are the facts a customer, a regulator or an AI assistant can read on the live site.
Live orders arrive on a Thursday or Friday by tracked live-animal courier (DX). The exact date sits in the checkout and is refreshed every hour by a script, so it is never out of date.
£19.95 delivery, half price from £100, free from £200, and free on the whole order with a free-delivery fish pack.
Aqua checks whether the live-animal courier reaches a postcode before the customer orders, and says honestly when it does not.
A text and an email when the order is paid, when the courier scans the box, when it is on the van with a two-hour window, and when it is delivered, with unpacking advice.
Each fish is bagged in pure oxygen, wrapped so it cannot shift, boxed in insulated polystyrene with a heat pack when the weather calls for it, and labelled “live fish, this way up”.
Every fish, shrimp, snail and plant is covered. An email with photos on the day of delivery gets a refund or a replacement with the next order. No haggling.
Every listing shows temperature, pH, tank size, diet and tank mates, with the references behind it: FishBase, Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes, GBIF, IUCN, WoRMS, Seriously Fish and OATA care sheets.
Aqua answers on the website by text or voice in English, Welsh, Polish, Persian, Urdu, Chinese and nine more, reads live order status, and raises a ticket when a person is needed.
Tank volume, stocking, water-parameter and tank-mate compatibility calculators, and a “find fish for your tank” finder that filters live stock by tank size, temperament and experience.
73 packs of fish chosen to live together, filterable by tank size, water, temperature and price, with delivery included on the ones that ship free.
The listings are where most of the work on this shop goes, and the length shows it: the livestock pages we sampled on 27 October 2026 run from 6,400 to 8,000 words, with tables for the figures and a block of answered questions for the buyer. None of it comes from asking an assistant for a product description. Each species is looked up in the reference sources first, the draft is written from those records, a second model checks the figures, and the questions on the page are the ones UK buyers type into Google. The references are listed at the foot of every livestock page, with links. Nor are the pages written once and left: a June 2026 refresh touched 2,417 of the 2,639 listings and 54 dated reviews have run since.
898
of 2,639 listings past 3,000 words
In the stored description and answers alone, before the care tables the page adds
6,400 to 8,000
words on the live livestock pages we sampled
Checked 27 October 2026, with four to nine tables and a FAQ block on every one
8
search-data calls per listing
1,789 listings have the full run on file; 99,121 keyword-volume rows and 217,739 distinct autocomplete phrases stored
124
adult sizes corrected against FishBase
29 August 2026: the supplier’s own size disagreed with ours on 752 of 1,237 records
Step 1
Each listing is read for its scientific name first. The supplier’s trade name is kept, but the research runs on the species.
Step 2
Separate calls to FishBase, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Seriously Fish for every species, with every response stored in full against the stock code.
Step 3
A language model writes a first care summary from those records only. A second, separate model then fact-checks the critical figures and its corrections are applied before anything is merged.
Step 4
When sources disagree, Seriously Fish wins on aquarium figures, FishBase on scientific facts, the draft fills gaps and Wikipedia comes last. The rule is written in the code, so it is the same for every species.
Step 5
Eight search-data calls per listing: Google volumes, related searches, “people also search for”, long-tail suggestions and live Google results and autocomplete. The questions on the page come from those terms.
Step 6
Tables for the figures, a question-and-answer block for the buyer, and a “Consult the care references” list linking to FishBase and Seriously Fish. No word-count quota: the page is as long as the questions need.
Step 7
The listings are not written once and left. Whole-catalogue checks run after publishing and the pages are refreshed as stock, the sources and the searches change: a June 2026 content refresh touched 2,417 of the 2,639 listings, 54 dated reviews have run since, and the August 2026 adult-size audit compared every size on the site with FishBase and with the supplier’s own figure and corrected 124 of them.
A June 2026 content refresh touched 2,417 of the 2,639 listings, two months after launch. 54 dated reviews have run between 2 June 2026 and 24 October 2026, each kept with what it found and what changed, and a read-only readiness check runs before any listing is rewritten, so facts, reviews and species names are not lost in the edit.
| Keywords Everywhere | Monthly volume, cost per click and trend for every seed term |
|---|---|
| Keywords Everywhere | Related keywords for the top seeds |
| Keywords Everywhere | “People also search for” terms |
| DataForSEO | Long-tail keyword suggestions |
| DataForSEO | Related keywords with volumes |
| DataForSEO | “People also ask” question lookup |
| Live Google results (Apify) | Related searches and the pages that rank for the term in the UK |
| Google Autocomplete (Apify) | The phrases Google completes when a UK buyer starts typing |
Shops copy each other’s figures. Livestock is sold at a shipping size, and on 30 listings that number had become the “adult size”: a jewel cichlid, an aggressive species that reaches 12 cm, was on sale as a 3.5 cm small fish. The 29 August 2026 audit compared every adult size on the site with FishBase and with the supplier’s own maximum, found the two disagreeing on 752 of 1,237 records, corrected 124 sizes and cut the shoal offers on fish too large to be sold as a group from 27 to the five that were deliberate.
A buyer who arrives believing a pleco will clean the tank, or that a betta can live in a dirty bowl, is a return waiting to happen. 16 listings name a myth outright and many more correct one without using the word. Four, quoted from the live pages:
| Species | What many keepers believe | What the listing says |
|---|---|---|
| Acei cichlid | Acei are the “peaceful mbuna”. | “Acei are relatively mild compared with many mbuna, but “peaceful” is misleading without the comparison.” |
| Rabbit snail | Rabbit snails lay eggs like other aquarium snails. | “Research on Tylomelania describes a uterine brood pouch in which eggs and embryos are retained.” |
| L393 bristlenose | A pleco will clean the tank. | “The fish may graze soft algae and biofilm, but it cannot guarantee removal of hair algae, black beard algae, cyanobacteria or every film on the glass.” |
| Betta | A fish that breathes air can live in dirty water. | “Maintenance should respond to actual water quality, not to the myth that surface-breathing fish tolerate dirty water.” |
Every order, step by step
Since 21 October 2026 the shop reads the courier’s scans and tells the customer itself, by text and by email, at every stage. Replies to the text go to Aqua, which reads the live order status. The aftercare call is the next step.
A text with the item summary and delivery days, and the confirmation email with a progress tracker.
An email that the label is booked and the box is not dispatched yet.
“Now with DX”, with the date and the tracking link, by text and email.
DX’s two-hour window and a reminder to be in, by text and email.
“Float the bags, pale colours are normal”, with unpacking advice.
A follow-up call asking how the fish arrived and whether anything needs putting right. Being rolled out.
Texts go to orders with a UK mobile number; emails go to everyone. The whole chain was tested against prompt injection before it went live.
Google’s own measurement of real visitors, not a lab score. In August the storefront was rebuilt for speed; all three Core Web Vitals now pass, and Lighthouse scores the category pages 100 for accessibility and 100 for SEO.
Chrome UX Report (Google’s field data from real visitors), phones, 75th percentile, 28 September–25 October 2026. The /shop/betta category page: LCP 1.1s, INP 211ms, CLS 0.00. Lighthouse (lab, mobile, 2026-10-27): accessibility 100, SEO 100 on the category page.
4.4
from 118 reviews collected by Judge.me, an independent collector
Google Maps: 4.6 from 24. Critical reviews stay published, with the shop’s replies.
15
languages on the website assistant, by text or voice. The shop’s buyers are not all native English speakers, and the data showed it.
73
fish packs of species chosen to live together, built from the order history and supplier costs, filterable by tank size, water and temperature.
AI visibility
In May 2026 no Google AI Overview in the UK cited the shop. In September 2026, 446 did, and DataForSEO now counts 615 AI Overview answers that cite tropicalfishco.co.uk.
On 26 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, with a UK location and web search on: “Where can I buy tropical fish online in the UK?” It recommended five shops and listed Tropical Fish Co third, six months after launch.
And AI assistants bring buyers. Over 26 July–23 October 2026, they sent 3.0% of the shop’s sessions and 2.5% of its purchases in Google Analytics. Sessions from AI assistants rose 119% on the previous 90 days, when they brought no purchases at all. ChatGPT sends almost all of it.
Google AI Overview citations, UK, by month
Google AI Overview answers in the UK that cite the shop, by month. DataForSEO LLM Mentions, checked 26 October 2026. Third-party tracking of a sample of searches, not a Google figure.
ChatGPT answers change from one run to the next; this was one check. We track them over time rather than claiming a permanent place.
With livestock, a slipped page or a missed question costs more than a click. So the shop is watched all the time, and it changes every week.
Search, analytics and shop data are checked around the clock, with an alert when clicks, rankings or orders move outside their normal range. Even the delivery dates in the checkout are rewritten by a script every hour.
Our AI agents go through Search Console and Google Analytics daily, flag pages that slipped and suggest what to fix next.
Aqua, the shop’s assistant, has answered 1,711 conversations on website chat, WhatsApp and the phone, in 15 languages on the website.
Our team checks every alert and suggestion against stock, season and animal welfare before anything changes on the shop.
Tropical Fish Co grows on organic search and does not run a steady Search campaign yet; the plan is to add one on the same pages once the catalogue work settles, run from our Google Partner account like Aquatropics’. That shop shows what these pages do for ad prices: about 7p a click, because Google rates the landing pages above average. Meta ads and Google Shopping are set up and tested on Tropical Fish Co; they stay small while the free channels carry the growth.
Read the Aquatropics Google Ads case studyBuying searches picked from the shop’s top UK searches by clicks, brand names left out. UK, web search, all devices, 26 September–23 October 2026.
567 UK clicks · average position 8.4
242 UK clicks · average position 7.8
215 UK clicks · average position 7.6
See the customer journey
A customer researching after office hours should not have to wait to find basic product or care information. Aqua, the shop’s assistant, gives them another route to it, alongside the product page and written guides. The team still owns decisions about stock, animal welfare, dispatch and exceptions.
Text chat · checked
Aqua returned the delivery and contact pages, plus the FAQ. Each destination was checked and loaded successfully.
Aqua found the guppy category and displayed related product and care-guide links. The category destination loaded correctly and matched the shop navigation.
These two text-chat checks demonstrate navigation and information finding. They do not measure voice quality, private order handling, uptime, resolution rates or time and money saved. No customer details or purchase instructions were submitted.
We build custom Shopify storefronts and WooCommerce shops with the SEO, structured data, delivery messaging and AI visibility set up from the first day, then keep watching after launch. Pet and aquatics retailers are where we have the deepest data; the method carries to any shop.
We publish enough to be checked, not everything the shop knows. Here is where each figure comes from and how to confirm it without taking our word for it.
Want more than the page shows? Ask us and we will go through the live reports with you, with the shop’s permission where it is a client’s data.
Hand On Web built it from scratch as a custom Shopify storefront: Shopify runs the checkout, stock and orders, and our own front end handles the design, categories, product pages, fish packs, care guides and fishkeeping tools. The shop is run by our founder, so we look after its website, SEO, delivery messaging and customer service ourselves and can show all of it.
The shop went live in April 2026. That month Google Search Console recorded 150 clicks at an average position of 25.1. By September it had 13,546 clicks at 5.5, and in the 28 days to 23 October 2026 its average position was 4.97.
Yes. Over 26 July–23 October 2026 it had 34,912 Google clicks, 5.6 times the previous 90 days, and its average position moved from 10.5 to 5.9. In the latest 28 days impressions rose 12% and average position improved from 5.66 to 4.97, while clicks held level (−2.4%).
Yes, a small and growing share. In 26 July–23 October 2026, AI assistants brought 3.0% of the shop’s sessions and 2.5% of its purchases in Google Analytics, almost all from ChatGPT. Google AI Overviews in the UK cited the shop 446 times in September 2026, up from none in May (DataForSEO).
Google’s own field data (Chrome UX Report, phones, 75th percentile, 28 September–25 October 2026) puts the shop at 1.5 seconds Largest Contentful Paint, 195 milliseconds Interaction to Next Paint and 0.00 layout shift, inside all three of Google’s “good” thresholds. Lighthouse scores the category pages 100 for accessibility and 100 for SEO. Its sitemap listed 3,258 pages on 26 October 2026, 2,680 of them products.
Selling. Orders recorded in Google Analytics rose from 13 in May 2026 to 120 in September, 67% of them from organic search, and 30% of purchases over the last 90 days came from returning visitors. We publish counts and shares rather than sales values.
Each species is looked up in FishBase, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Seriously Fish, with every record stored against the stock code. A language model drafts a care summary from those records only, a second model fact-checks the figures, and where sources disagree Seriously Fish wins on aquarium figures and FishBase on scientific facts. Eight search-data calls per listing (Keywords Everywhere, DataForSEO, live Google results and autocomplete) show what UK buyers actually search for, and the question-and-answer block on each page is written from those terms. Of the shop’s 2,639 listings, 898 run past 3,000 words in the description alone before the care tables are added; the live livestock pages we sampled on 27 October 2026 ran from 6,400 to 8,000 words with four to nine tables. Each livestock page ends with a “Consult the care references” list linking to FishBase and Seriously Fish. The listings are kept under review after publishing: a June 2026 refresh touched 2,417 of them and 54 dated reviews have run since.
No. Average position is an average across every time the shop appeared in Google. Some searches rank first, others on page two: “betta fish for sale” averaged 7.2 in the UK, while “tropical fish for sale” averaged 14.2. Results vary by search, device and day.
Both shops side by side
E-commerce SEO case studies
The customer-service side
Aqua on website chat, WhatsApp and the phone
The service
E-commerce web design
Who does the work
Meet the team
For pet and aquarium shops
What we build for online pet shops
Both shops’ customer service
Smart sales and 24/7 customer service gallery
Search figures come from the Google Search Console API, checked on 26 October 2026. Property: sc-domain:tropicalfishco.co.uk. Search type: web. The fixed periods end on 23 October 2026, the last day of final data. Brand searches are included in the totals and left out of the search examples. Google hides some rare searches, so the search lists do not add up to the totals.
Average position is Google’s average of the shop’s highest position each time it appeared. It is not a ranking of businesses, and it does not mean every product is in the top 10. Clicks are not unique visitors and impressions are not people.
Page counts come from the shop’s sitemap on 26 October 2026 and from the pages Search Console reported in the last 90 days. Keyword counts and AI Overview mentions come from DataForSEO, a third-party tool that tracks a sample of UK searches. The ChatGPT check is one answer on 26 October 2026, through DataForSEO’s ChatGPT scraper with a UK location and web search on; answers change from run to run. AI referral shares come from Google Analytics 4, by the source of each session. We publish shares, not sales figures.
