Browse Analytics
Attribution explore
The Attribution explore has one row for every touchpoint of every conversion's journey. What it covers, what to know when reading it, and every dimension and metric in it.
The Attribution explore has one row for every touchpoint of every conversion's journey: the visitor's touchpoints in the 90 days up to the conversion. A touchpoint is a visit's entrance, or a campaign that reached the visitor later in a visit, such as a retargeting ad opened in a new tab, which is a Mid-visit touch.
Use it for paths, assists and how each attribution model shares the credit. Attribution modelling explains journeys, touchpoints and the models.
Good to know
- A conversion has as many rows as its journey has touchpoints. Metrics about conversions count each one once, on the touchpoint that closes its journey; metrics about credit add up the touchpoints' shares.
- Grouped by a touchpoint's channel, Conversions are the conversions it closed, Took part in those it was in, and each model's conversions the credit it was given.
- First touch gives a conversion to its first touchpoint, last touch to its last, and linear an equal share to each, so each model hands out every conversion exactly once. Last touch is the Campaigns explore's Credited conversions.
- A conversion is each kind the Visits explore counts, once a visit, so a visit with a purchase and a newsletter signup ends two journeys.
- The Attribution dashboard's Organic and Direct/Internal switches keep those channels in every journey or leave them out. A journey they leave with nothing falls back to the converting visit's entrance, and is Credited by fallback.
- A journey is one visitor's, and a visitor is a device. Safari clears the device cookie after 7 days without a visit, so there a journey with a longer gap splits in two.
Used on dashboards
Charts on these dashboards are built on the Attribution explore:
- Attribution: which channel gets credit?: Credit, Assists and Paths
Dimensions
The Attribution explore has 28 dimensions.
The conversion
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion time | Timestamp | When the visit the conversion happened in began, which is when its credit is dated, under every model. Time intervals: Raw, Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year. |
| Conversion | String | What the visit did: Purchase, Trial start, Demo request, Newsletter signup or Lead, each as the Visits explore counts it, once a visit. A visit that did two of them ends a journey for each. |
| Path | String | The channels the journey's touchpoints came by, in order, such as Organic Search → Email → Paid Search ×2: consecutive touchpoints from one channel are one step, and a path of more than five steps shows its first two and its last two around how many it leaves out. Organic, Direct and Internal touchpoints are in it only while their switches include them. |
| Visits in journey | Number | How many visits the journey's touchpoints are in, the converting visit included where one of its touchpoints is. |
| Journey length | String | Visits in the journey, the converting one included, in five bands: 1 visit, 2, 3-4, 5-9 and 10 or more, the Visits explore's bands of Visits to convert. |
| Touchpoints in journey | Number | How many touchpoints the journey has: its visits' entrances and the campaigns that reached them mid-visit, those the switches keep. |
| Credited touchpoints | Number | How many touchpoints share the journey's credit, which is every touchpoint of it: Touchpoints in journey. |
| Channels in journey | Number | How many channels the journey's touchpoints came by. |
| Days to convert | Number | Days from the journey's first touchpoint to the start of the visit it converted in: 0 for a conversion in its first touchpoint's visit. At most 90, the journey's reach. |
| Opened by | String | The channel of the journey's first touchpoint, which first touch credits. |
| Closed by | String | The channel of the journey's last touchpoint, which last touch credits: by default the converting visit's own, unless it arrived Direct or Internal after something else touched the journey, or a campaign reached it mid-visit before the conversion. |
The touchpoint
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Touchpoint time | Timestamp | When this touchpoint happened: its visit's start for an entrance, and the page view's time for a mid-visit touch. Time intervals: Raw, Day, Week, Month. |
| Touchpoint in journey | Number | Which of the journey's touchpoints this is, from 1 for its first; the last closes the journey. |
| Mid-visit touch | Boolean | Whether this touchpoint is a campaign that reached the visitor after their visit began, such as a retargeting ad opened in a new tab, rather than how a visit arrived. |
| Credited by fallback | Boolean | Whether the switches left nothing of this journey, so the conversion is credited to its own visit's entrance whatever its channel: why an Organic or a Direct conversion still has credit with its switch excluded. |
| Closes the journey | Boolean | Whether this is the journey's last touchpoint, which last touch credits and every count of conversions is counted on. |
| Channel | String | How this touchpoint reached the visitor, by the rules of Channel in the page view explore: a visit's entrance as it arrived, a mid-visit touch over its own page view. |
| Source | String | Where this touchpoint came from, as the Visits explore's Source reads it, lower-cased, as the Campaigns explore keys it. |
| Medium | String | How this touchpoint came, as the Visits explore's Medium reads it, lower-cased. |
| Source / medium | String | Source and medium together, such as google / cpc or newsletter / email. |
| Campaign | String | The campaign this touchpoint's link carried, lower-cased. |
| Campaign ID | String | The ad platform's campaign id this touchpoint's link carried as utm_id. |
| Role | String | What this touchpoint did for the conversion. Opened: the first of several. Mid-journey: one between the first and the last. Closed: the last of several. Only touch: the one touchpoint of its journey. |
| Converting visit | Boolean | Whether this touchpoint is in the visit the conversion happened in: its entrance, or a campaign that reached it before the conversion. |
| Step | String | On the first touchpoint of each of a journey's first three steps, that step: its number and channel, such as 2 · Email. Empty on every other row, and on a journey of one step. |
| Next step | String | Beside Step, the step after it, such as 3 · Direct, or 4+ and the channel of the journey's last step where it has four steps or more. |
Browser, operating system and device
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Device type | String | Desktop, mobile, tablet or smart tv, from the User-Agent header, and unknown where it names no platform: the hardware, where Device class is the layout the window's width gives. A tablet asking for desktop sites, as Safari on iPad does by default, reads as desktop. |
Data source and quality
| Dimension | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Site | String | The property the event was sent to, read from the key it was sent with. |
Metrics
The Attribution explore has 36 metrics.
Conversions, each once
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Conversions | Count distinct | Conversions, each counted once, on the row of the touchpoint that closes its journey: grouped by a touchpoint's channel, the conversions it closed, which is last touch. Each kind counts once a visit, as the Visits explore counts Conversions. |
| Revenue | Sum | The revenue of the purchases among the conversions, each once, in the order's own currency, as the Visits explore reads it. |
| Journeys | Count distinct | Conversions with any touchpoint in the rows: grouped by a step of a path, the journeys that took it. |
| Took part in | Count distinct | Conversions with a touchpoint in the rows, every touchpoint sharing its journey's credit: grouped by a channel, the conversions it took part in. Adds up past the total on purpose, since a journey can have several channels. |
| Distinct paths | Count distinct | How many different paths the conversions took. |
| Visits per journey | Average | Visits a conversion's journey's touchpoints are in, averaged over conversions. |
| Touchpoints per journey | Average | Touchpoints in a conversion's journey, its visits' entrances and the campaigns that reached them mid-visit, averaged over conversions. |
| Channels per journey | Average | Channels a conversion's journey's touchpoints came by, averaged over conversions. |
| Median days to convert | Median | Days from a journey's first touchpoint to the visit it converted in, the median over conversions. Short on Safari, which clears the device cookie after 7 days without a visit. |
| Multi-visit conversions | Count distinct | Conversions whose journey's touchpoints are in more than one visit. |
| Multi-visit journeys | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions whose journey's touchpoints are in more than one visit. |
| First-visit conversions | Count distinct | Conversions whose journey's touchpoints are all in one visit. |
| Converted on the first visit | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions whose journey's touchpoints are all in one visit, within its 90 days. |
| Conversions after 5+ visits | Count distinct | Conversions whose journey's touchpoints are in five visits or more. |
| Journeys of 5+ visits | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions whose journey's touchpoints are in five visits or more, the last two bands of Journey length. |
| Handed to another channel | Count distinct | Conversions whose journey one channel opened and another closed, where first touch and last touch credit different channels. |
| Models disagree on | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions first touch and last touch credit to different channels. |
Credit, by model
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| First-touch conversions | Sum | Conversions credited by first touch: each to its journey's first touchpoint. Over every channel they add up to Conversions. |
| Linear conversions | Sum | Conversions credited by linear: each split in equal shares between its journey's touchpoints. Over every channel they add up to Conversions. |
| Last-touch conversions | Sum | Conversions credited by last touch: each to its journey's last touchpoint, as the Campaigns explore's Credited conversions. Over every channel they add up to Conversions. |
| First-touch revenue | Sum | The revenue of the purchases credited by first touch. |
| Linear revenue | Sum | The revenue of the purchases credited by linear, split as they are. |
| Last-touch revenue | Sum | The revenue of the purchases credited by last touch. |
Assists
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Assisted conversions | Count distinct | Conversions with a touchpoint before the last one, as Universal Analytics counted assists: grouped by a channel, the conversions it assisted; in all, the conversions with an assist. |
| Share with an assist | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions whose journey has more than one touchpoint. |
| Assisted revenue | Sum | The revenue of the purchases whose journey has more than one touchpoint. |
| Assists per close | Ratio | Assisted conversions over last-touch conversions, Universal Analytics' assisted to last click ratio: above 1, the channel opens and assists more conversions than it closes; below 1, it mostly closes them. |
| Touchpoints in journeys | Count | The journeys' touchpoints: a touchpoint in two conversions' journeys counts in each. |
| Opened | Sum | Touchpoints that opened a journey with more than one touchpoint. |
| Mid-journey | Sum | Touchpoints between a journey's first and last ones. |
| Closed | Sum | Touchpoints that closed a journey with more than one touchpoint. |
| Only touch | Sum | Touchpoints that were their journey's only one. |
What the touchpoints and the switches changed
| Metric | Calculation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Last touch to mid-visit touches | Sum | Conversions last touch credits to a campaign that reached the visitor mid-visit rather than to how a visit arrived. |
| Credit to mid-visit touches | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions last touch credits to a campaign that reached the visitor mid-visit, which visit-based attribution gave to how the visit arrived. |
| Credited by fallback | Count distinct | Conversions whose journey the switches left nothing of, credited to their own visit's entrance whatever its channel. |
| Share credited by fallback | Ratio (%) | The share of conversions whose journey the switches left nothing of: how much of the credit an excluded channel keeps, since a conversion nothing else touched stays with its own visit. |