If you're using Google Analytics and you haven't touched the attribution settings, there's a good chance you're running on last-click attribution. It's the default for a reason — it's dead simple to calculate.
The problem is that it's also very good at giving you the wrong answer.
What last-click attribution actually does
Last-click gives 100% of the credit for a sale to the very last thing a user clicked before converting. Everything that came before it gets zero.
Here's a real-world example of why that's a problem.
Someone hears your company mentioned on a podcast. They don't look you up right away. A week later they see your Instagram ad but don't click. The week after that, they get an email from a newsletter you sponsor, click through, and read your blog. Two days later, they Google your brand name, land on your homepage, and sign up.
Under last-click attribution: Google Search gets 100% of the credit. The podcast, the Instagram ad, and the newsletter sponsorship all show as zero.
Now imagine you're allocating budget based on this data. You're going to put more money into "branded search" — even though branded search is only capturing demand that your top-of-funnel channels already created. Meanwhile, you look at your podcast sponsorship and newsletter spend and think they're performing terribly, because attribution gives them nothing.
How AI search makes this even worse
The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity has introduced a whole new layer of "invisible" influence. Users research products by asking AI systems questions. They read synthesized answers that might include your brand. They don't click anything. Then, days later, they search directly for your company name and convert.
Under last-click, a direct search gets the credit. But the actual influence was an AI recommendation that generated zero clicks and left zero trace in your analytics.
What to do instead
You don't need a perfect multi-touch attribution model to make better decisions than last-click. Even a few changes help:
Track earlier touchpoints. Every piece of content you publish, every ad you run, every newsletter link — make sure it goes through a tracked URL. The more touchpoints you capture, the more of the journey you can see.
Don't cut top-of-funnel based on last-click data. If branded search is suddenly spiking, ask what changed in the weeks before. If podcast mentions are up and branded search is up two weeks later, that's not a coincidence.
Look at time-decay attribution. Most analytics tools offer this as an alternative. It gives more credit to touchpoints closer to conversion but doesn't completely ignore earlier ones. It's not perfect, but it's much better than all-or-nothing.
For all of this to work, you need tracked links at every touchpoint. gometrify lets you create a unique tracked short link for every channel — social, email, paid, partner — so every click in the journey is logged and attributable. Start tracking every touchpoint →