Attribution exists because the honest answer is often several things. Somebody saw a post, searched later, read a review, and called a week after that. Assigning the sale to one of those is a modelling choice rather than a fact.
First-touch credits what created awareness, last-touch credits what closed, and both are wrong in predictable directions. First-touch overvalues the top of the funnel, last-touch overvalues branded search, which is why last-touch models make Google Ads look like the source of demand it merely harvested.
For a small business the practical version is simpler than the theory: ask how people heard about you, record the answer, and accept that it is imperfect. A rough number that exists beats a rigorous one that nobody maintains.
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Frequently asked
What is the difference between first-touch and last-touch attribution?
First-touch gives all credit to the first interaction, last-touch to the final one before purchase. Each answers a different question, and running both is more informative than arguing about which is correct, because the gap between them tells you how long your buying cycle really is.
Why does attribution never add up?
Because people use several devices, block tracking, and take advice offline. Some demand is genuinely unmeasurable, and a model that appears to account for every sale is usually assigning credit it cannot justify.
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