First Touch vs Last Touch Attribution for Websites

You do not have to pick one.

Most debates about first touch versus last touch assume a website can only credit a visitor once. It can credit them twice. Store the touch that found them, store the touch that closed them, and decide which lens to read at report time.

The real mistake is not choosing the wrong model. It is throwing the other one away at the moment the data arrives.

What is the difference between first touch and last touch?

First-touch attribution credits a conversion to the first tracked source that brought the visitor to your website, while last-touch attribution credits the most recent tracked source before the conversion.

• First touch answers: what introduced this person to us?
• Last touch answers: what finally got them to act?
• Both read from the same visitor and the same conversion. Only the credit moves. For the wider basics, see what web attribution is.

Here is an illustrative journey, not real data:

First touch gives the sale to paid search. Last touch gives it to paid social. Neither is wrong. They answer different questions, and the email never gets credit in either model, which is where multi-touch models come in later.

When is first touch the right lens?

Use first touch when the question is where demand comes from.

• Discovery channels. Content, organic social, influencers and top-of-funnel paid campaigns rarely close a sale. Last touch makes them look useless. Unpaid AI assistant answers are one such channel, as in tracking AI assistant traffic to your website.
• Brand and content investment. A guide that introduces a visitor three weeks before they buy deserves some of the credit.
• New-audience decisions. If you are deciding where to find more people like your best customers, you want to know what found them, not what they clicked last.
• Spotting over-reliance. If almost all your first touches come from one channel, you have a fragile acquisition mix.

First touch is stable by design. It never changes once recorded, so a customer's origin stays fixed however many later campaigns they touch.

When is last touch the right lens?

Use last touch when the question is what to do with budget near the sale.

• Closing channels. Retargeting, brand search and email are built to convert people already interested.
• Short-cycle budget decisions. If you are deciding what to scale this week, the most recent tagged touch is the cleanest signal of what is converting.
• Ad network reconciliation. Networks typically credit their own last click, so a last-touch view usually lines up more closely with what they report.

Last touch has well-known blind spots, covered in our contrarian view on last-click attribution. It often over-rewards whatever happens to sit closest to the purchase. That is exactly why it should not be your only lens.

Why should you store both?

The two models are not rivals at collection time. They are two columns recorded from the same visitor, and you choose the lens later.

Here is how Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta) stores them, as documented:

First touch

• First-touch UTM parameters and click IDs are kept until the visitor's browser storage is cleared.
• The visitor ID and user ID are kept on the same basis.
• First touch never changes.

Last touch

• Last-touch click IDs are kept for 90 days.
• Last-touch UTM parameters are kept for 24 hours from the campaign click.
• Last touch goes to the most recent tagged touch.

Reporting

• The web campaigns reporting API (part of web attribution, in beta) takes attribution=last_touch by default, or first_touch. See the reporting API reference.

Tech Explainer: why the windows differ.

• The click ID is kept for 90 days.
• UTM parameters are kept for a short attribution window of 24 hours from the click.
• The first-touch copy persists until browser storage is cleared.

Setup details are in the Web SDK docs. Linkrunner is a mobile and web attribution platform, and the web side is in beta, so check the docs for the current behaviour before you rely on any window.

What counts as a new touch?

Last touch only works if you agree what a touch is. On a website, plenty of activity looks like a visit without being one.

A new touch is a later tagged visit, such as an ad click or a link carrying UTM parameters.

These are new touches:

• A later ad click that carries a click ID.
• A tagged link, for example an email or social post, that carries UTM parameters.

These are not new touches:

• A page reload.
• The back or forward button.
• An internal link between your own pages.

Without that last rule, every reload would overwrite the source and last touch would collapse into "direct". A payment gateway return is a similar trap, covered in tracking UTMs through payment gateway redirects.

Two further points matter for reporting:

• Every stored ad click ID is still sent with each event, so each connected ad network's conversion postback still gets its own click ID. Switching your report between first and last touch changes the report view, not the data stored.
• This is click-based, so it follows the logic of click-through attribution. A visit with no click ID and no UTMs has nothing to credit, which is why consistent tagging matters. Our guide to UTM naming conventions that scale covers how to keep it clean.

Beyond two models

First and last touch are single-touch models. They each ignore the middle of the journey, such as the newsletter in the table above.

• Multi-touch spreads credit across several touches. Multi-touch attribution earns its complexity when journeys are long, budgets are large and several channels clearly work together.
• For many teams, two stored touches answer most day-to-day questions with far less effort than multi-touch. Our comparison of multi-touch versus single-touch models lays out when the step up is worth it.
• A practical rule: if you cannot yet explain the gap between your first-touch and last-touch reports, a third model will only add noise.

How to use both in practice

1. Tag every campaign link consistently with UTM parameters.
2. Report last touch for weekly budget decisions.
3. Report first touch monthly to see where new demand comes from.
4. Investigate any channel that ranks high on one lens and low on the other. That gap is the insight.

If you are measuring both your app and your website, Linkrunner handles mobile and web attribution in one place, with the web side in beta. To see the two lenses on your own data, request a demo and we will walk through both cuts with you. You can also read about web attribution (beta) on the product page.

FAQ

What is the difference between first-touch and last-touch attribution? First-touch attribution credits a conversion to the first tracked source that brought the visitor to your website. Last-touch attribution credits the most recent tracked source before the conversion. The visitor and the conversion are the same, only the credited source changes.

Which attribution model is best for a website? Neither is best on its own. First touch shows where demand comes from, and last touch shows what converts it. The more reliable approach is to store both and read each for the question it answers.

Can I report both models on the same data? Yes, provided both touches are stored when the visit happens. In Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta), first touch and last touch are both kept, and the web campaigns reporting API takes attribution=last_touch (the default) or first_touch.

How long does last-touch attribution last? In Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta), last-touch click IDs are kept for 90 days and last-touch UTM parameters for 24 hours from the campaign click. First-touch data is kept until the visitor's browser storage is cleared.

Does a page reload count as a new touch? No. A reload, the back or forward button and an internal link are not new touches. Only a later tagged visit, such as an ad click with a click ID or a link with UTM parameters, can become the new last touch.