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Digital Marketing & SEO vocabulary · Analytics and Attribution

Attribution

Meaning in digital marketing & SEO, with examples

/ˌætrɪˈbjuːʃən/nounCommon term

In digital marketing & SEO, attribution means: Deciding which channels, ads or touchpoints get credit for a conversion when a customer interacted with several of them before buying.

In Turkish: ilişkilendirme, atıf

How it is used

A central topic in analytics and budget discussions. Teams compare attribution models such as last-click, first-click, linear and data-driven. Different tools often give different answers, which leads to long debates.

Example sentences

  1. With last-click attribution, search gets all the credit, even though most buyers found us on social media first.

  2. The ad platform and our analytics tool show different numbers because they use different attribution settings.

Common collocations

  • attribution model
  • last-click attribution
  • data-driven attribution
  • multi-touch attribution
  • conversion trackingSetting up tools so that ad platforms and analytics can record when a visitor completes a goal, such as a purchase or a form submission.
  • customer journeyAll the steps and interactions a person goes through with a brand, from first hearing about it to buying and using the product.
  • UTM parameterA tag added to the end of a URL, such as utm_source or utm_campaign, that tells analytics tools where a visitor came from.
  • ROASShort for return on ad spend: the revenue earned for each unit of money spent on advertising, shown as a ratio like 4:1 or a percentage like 400%.

More terms: Analytics and Attribution

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