GA4 Attribution Path Report

July 2, 2025

Ever felt like you’re shouting into the wind, trying to explain the value of your marketing efforts to your boss or clients?

You know your SEO work is driving traffic, and your social media campaigns are creating a buzz, but when it comes to tying that directly to sales or sign-ups, things get a bit… fuzzy.

What if there was a way to clearly show how each channel contributes to those all-important conversions?

Well, there is.

It’s called the Attribution Path report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and honestly, it’s a bit of a hidden gem.

It’s one of those reports that many marketers overlook, but it holds the key to understanding how your users really interact with your brand on their way to becoming a customer.

So, if you’re tired of a shrug when you’re asked about the ROI of your channels, this one’s for you.

Attributions Report

The Attribution Path report shows you the sequence of touchpoints a user has with your website before they trigger a Key Event. Think of it as a roadmap of their journey. It helps you see which channels they interacted with first, which ones they engaged with in the middle, and which one finally pushed them over the line.

To find this report, just click on ‘Advertising’ in the left-hand menu of GA4, and then under ‘Attribution’, you’ll see ‘Attribution Paths’.

Once you’re in, you’ll be greeted by two main visualisations.

At the top, there’s a handy data visualisation that breaks down the user journey into Early, Mid, and Late Touchpoints.

Underneath that, you’ve got a data table that gives you a more detailed overview of how your Key Events are performing and the channels involved.

The Visualisation – Making sense of the Touchpoints

The top visualisation breaks down the customer journey into three stages:

Early Touchpoints: These are the first 25% of interactions a user has with you. This is often where they first become aware of your brand.
Mid Touchpoints: This is the middle 50% of the journey. Here, users are typically in the consideration phase, weighing up their options. If a journey has fewer than three touchpoints, this section will be empty.
Late Touchpoints: These are the final 25% of interactions before a Key Event. This is where the magic happens, and a user decides to convert.

Analysis

For example, you might notice that Organic Search plays a huge role in the Early Touchpoints, introducing new users to your brand.

This demonstrates perhaps the role that blogs and informational content is playing in driving news uers to the site, then those pesky paid peeps are picking up all the glory in the late touch points.

If Organic Search is visible in late touch points then perhaps this demonstrates the strength of brand in driving users to convert.

All of this is really useful in helping to understand and demonstrate the ROI of your SEO strategies. Perhaps a strong brand indicates that more effort needs to be put in capturing users further up the funnel. Whereas lots of SEO early touch points and minimal late touch points might show that your information is really useful, but users are struggling to connect what you sell, with who you are.

The Data Table

Looking at the data table, you can see the top paths to conversion, the revenue generated, the average number of days to a Key Event, and the number of touchpoints involved.

It’s a goldmine of information!

You might see, for instance, that Paid Social is effective at both the beginning and the end of the journey, while Organic Search has a stronger influence closer to the point of conversion.

In the instance below, you can see that Paid plays a huge role in driving conversions, with minimal touchpoints too. This suggests this campaign is perhaps great at driving conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

Triggering It goes without saying (well it doesn't, cos I'm saying it) that this report only shows users who have completed a key event. Users that don't complete a key event won't be included in the attribution report.

Getting More Granular with Your Data

This is where you can really start to impress your clients.

The Attribution Path report has some nifty features that let you dig deeper into the data. At the top of the report, you can:

Change the Key Event: If you have multiple Key Events set up, you can switch between them to analyse different user journeys.
Adjust the Path Length: Want to see longer, more complex user journeys? You can filter to show paths with, say, more than five touchpoints.
Add a Filter: This is a really powerful feature. You can filter by country, device, or other dimensions. Curious about the role mobile plays in the customer journey? Filter by ‘Device’ and find out. The results might surprise you.
Change the Date Range: If you don’t have a lot of Key Event data, extending the date range can give you a more complete picture.
Switch Up the Attribution Model: The report defaults to the data-driven attribution model, which is usually the most insightful. However, you can change it to ‘Last Click’ to see how much credit the final touchpoint gets. This can be a useful comparison to highlight the shortcomings of a last-click-only view of the world.

Attribution Path Best Practice

To make sure you’re getting the most out of this report, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Get Your Key Events in Order: We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. Make sure your Key Events are set up correctly. Rubbish in, rubbish out, as they say.
Collect Enough Data: If your site doesn’t generate a huge number of Key Events, don’t be afraid to extend the date range to get a more meaningful amount of data.
Link Your Google Ads Account: For accurate data on your paid search efforts, make sure your Google Ads account is linked to your GA4 property.
Use UTMs Properly: To avoid a high volume of ‘unassigned’ or ‘(not set)’ traffic, make sure you’re using proper UTM parameters on all your campaigns. If you see a lot of ‘Direct’ traffic, it might be a sign that your overall GA4 setup needs a health check.
Apply Filters for Context: Don’t just look at the top-level data. Use filters like device category to uncover more nuanced insights.

It’s Time to Prove Your Worth

So, there you have it. The GA4 Attribution Path report is your secret weapon for understanding the complex journeys your users take and, more importantly, for proving the value of every single one of your marketing channels. No more vague statements about ‘brand awareness’. Now you can show, with data, exactly how your SEO efforts are contributing to the bottom line, or how your social media campaigns are teeing up sales.

Go on, have a play around with it. Get stuck in and start uncovering the stories your data has to tell. You might just be surprised by what you find.

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Author

Hello, I'm Kyle Rushton McGregor!

I’m an experienced GA4 Specialist with a demonstrated history of working with Google Tag Manager and Looker Studio. I’m an international speaker who has trained 1000s of people on all things analytics.