Measurement
Attribution model
An attribution model is a rule for assigning credit for a conversion across the touchpoints that preceded it: last click, first click, linear, time decay or data-driven.
What is attribution model?
An attribution model is a rule for assigning credit for a conversion across the touchpoints that preceded it: last click, first click, linear, time decay or data-driven. Each produces a different picture of the same data.
What turns on it
The model chosen determines which channels appear to work, which determines where budget goes.
The mechanics
Chosen to match the decision being made and the length of the sales cycle, with first-touch data preserved separately so long cycles can be analysed at all.
The misconception
No model is correct. They are different lenses on incomplete data, and the honest use is comparing them rather than adopting one as truth.
That is the whole of it. Anything more specific depends on the site in front of you.
Where this comes up in the work
It is part of Digital PR and Link Building, and more specifically of Authority content and thought leadership. Across the rest of the work it shows up in:
- Technical SEO, in which it is the first thing checked before cutting the third-party scripts nobody can name an owner for
- Entity and Semantic SEO, where it is the difference between building the glossary that makes the rest of the site legible working and appearing to
- Local SEO, in which it shows up as getting the category exactly right rather than approximately right
- Ecommerce SEO, where it sets the ceiling on finding the bestsellers that no page is built to capture demand for
What to check
Two questions that establish whether this is actually in order on a given site:
- Whether it is consistent across templates, or correct only on the page somebody checked
- Whether the measurement that would expose a problem is even being collected
Common questions
How much work is attribution model?
It depends entirely on where the problem originates. Establishing that is the first piece of work.
Should attribution model come before other work?
It comes before work that assumes it is already handled, and after anything actively blocking indexation.
How do you prove attribution model is worth fixing?
The model chosen determines which channels appear to work, which determines where budget goes. The evidence is specific to the site, which is why the check comes before the recommendation. Digital PR and Link Building covers the setup, Ecommerce SEO the maintenance nobody budgets for.
Is attribution model just another name for something?
No model is correct. They are different lenses on incomplete data, and the honest use is comparing them rather than adopting one as truth. The distinction matters because the two are fixed differently. People arriving here usually end up on Featured snippet or AI overview, and often on Core Web Vitals field data or Lighthouse lab score after that.
Will fixing attribution model move rankings?
Not on its own, and claims that it does are usually overselling. The model chosen determines which channels appear to work, which determines where budget goes. Most briefs that mention this also end up touching How do we measure SEO for a long sales cycle?, and sometimes Do we need separate pages for every city we serve?.
How is attribution model audited?
Chosen to match the decision being made and the length of the sales cycle, with first-touch data preserved separately so long cycles can be analysed at all. The check is cheap; the fix is where the work sits. HTML sitemap is the shortest useful page on this. Hub page is the most complete.
Find out what is actually holding this back
Tell us what you sell and what is not working. We will come back with the two or three things we would look at before anything else.