Attribution & Conversion Counting

Last Non-Direct Click vs Time-Decay Attribution

In short: Both models deal with how recency affects conversion credit, but they solve different problems. Last non-direct click is a single-touch model: it gives 100 percent of the credit to the most recent identifiable marketing touch, skipping over direct sessions entirely. Time-decay is a multi-touch model: it spreads credit across every touch in the path but weights the most recent ones more heavily on an exponential curve. Last non-direct click still runs GA4's standard channel reports today; time-decay was retired from Google's reporting in 2023 and now only exists in outside tools. If you want the simple, fast channel-grouping default, last non-direct click is what you already have running; if you want partial credit for the touches before the close, time-decay is the now third-party-only alternative.

By the AdFlint research team · Fact-checked against current Google and Meta platform behavior · Last reviewed July 2026

Last Non-Direct Click

Ignores direct sessions when assigning credit, handing the conversion to the last identifiable marketing source that preceded the visit.

When someone types your URL or arrives with no referrer, that session is skipped and credit passes back to the previous campaign, email, or organic visit. Analytics tools default to this because direct traffic is usually a returning user rather than a discovery channel. It shows up in GA4's cross-channel models. The catch: if the entire path is direct, direct keeps the conversion, and untagged campaigns get absorbed into it.

Full definition

Time-Decay Attribution

Weights touchpoints by recency, so interactions closer to the conversion receive exponentially more credit than ones earlier in the path.

Credit decays on a half-life, commonly seven days, so a touch a week before the conversion carries half the weight of one on the closing day. It suits long consideration cycles where recent activity signals intent. Google Ads and GA4 dropped it from reporting in 2023. The misunderstanding is assuming the half-life is tuned to your business; it is a fixed default, not something the model learns from your data.

Full definition

Side by side.

The differences that actually change what happens in your account.

 Last Non-Direct ClickTime-Decay Attribution
How many touches get creditOne, the single most recent non-direct touch takes all the credit.Every touch in the path gets some credit, weighted by recency.
How direct traffic is handledSkipped entirely; if the last touch is a direct visit, credit passes back to the touch before it.Treated like any other touch and weighted by its position in time; no special skip rule for direct sessions.
Where it's active todayPowers GA4's standard reports and default channel grouping right now.Removed from Google Ads and GA4 reporting in 2023; available only in third-party or custom-built models.
What upper-funnel channels getNothing, unless they happen to be the last non-direct touch before conversion.A small but nonzero share, shrinking the further back in time they occurred.
Complexity to computeSimple, one rule, one winner, easy to audit in a spreadsheet.More complex, requires a half-life parameter and a full path, not just the last touch.
Failure modeAn all-direct path, or one with no identifiable non-direct touch, leaves credit stuck on direct, and untagged campaigns get absorbed into it.A default half-life that does not match your sales cycle can bury a genuinely important early touch.

What actually separates them.

01

Last non-direct click credits exactly one touchpoint per conversion; time-decay distributes fractional credit across every touchpoint in the path.

02

Last non-direct click has a specific skip rule for direct sessions; time-decay has no concept of direct as special, it just weights whatever touch is most recent, direct or not.

03

Last non-direct click is still the engine behind GA4's default channel grouping and its Traffic acquisition report; time-decay has no equivalent live presence in Google's tools since 2023.

04

Time-decay requires a half-life setting to compute; last non-direct click has no tunable parameter, it is a single fixed rule.

05

A path that ends in a direct visit still resolves to a real channel under last non-direct click, whichever touch preceded it, while under time-decay a direct visit that happens to be last would itself receive the largest weighted share.

Which one should you use?

Use Last Non-Direct Click when

  • You are reading GA4's Traffic acquisition report and want to understand what is already being counted.
  • You need a fast, single-touch view of which channel gets credit without setting up a multi-touch model.
  • You want a rule that specifically avoids crediting direct for someone who searched an ad, clicked, left, and came back by typing your URL later.
  • You are auditing why a specific conversion is attributed to a specific channel and need a rule you can trace in one step.

Use Time-Decay Attribution when

  • You want partial credit given to the touches that happened before the final one, not just the last one.
  • Your buyers engage with multiple channels in the days before converting, and you want that engagement reflected in the numbers.
  • You are building or buying a multi-touch attribution tool outside Google's own reporting and need a recency-weighted option.
  • You have found that last non-direct click's single-touch view overstates your closing channel and understates everything upstream.

Common questions.

Is last non-direct click the same as GA4's data-driven attribution?

No. Last non-direct click is a single-touch, rule-based model that still governs GA4's Traffic acquisition report and its default channel grouping, while data-driven attribution is a separate, modeled multi-touch approach used in GA4's dedicated Attribution reporting and Google Ads conversion counting. GA4 actually runs both at once for different purposes, which is why the same conversion can look different depending on which report you are reading.

Why does a converting user who typed my URL directly get credited to a different channel?

Last non-direct click specifically skips direct sessions when assigning credit, on the theory that typing a URL usually means the person already knew where to go, likely because of an earlier ad or search. The credit rolls back to whichever identifiable marketing touch came before that direct visit.

Can I get time-decay-style partial credit for touches before the last click?

Not inside Google's own reporting, since time-decay was removed from Google Ads and GA4 in 2023. You would need to export conversion path data and calculate it yourself, or use a third-party attribution platform that still offers a time-decay preset.

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