Attribution model
attribu.tech uses a first-touch attribution model. The traffic source that first brought a visitor to your site gets credit for all their future purchases.
How it works
- A visitor lands on your site for the first time. The pixel records their source (UTM params, referrer, ad click ID).
- The visitor browses, leaves, and comes back days later. Their
attribu_visitor_idcookie persists. - When they eventually buy, attribu.tech looks up the earliest event for that visitor ID.
- The source from that first event is what appears in your dashboard as the attributed source.
First-touch answers the question: "What originally brought this customer to my site?" This is the most useful model for evaluating top-of-funnel marketing spend.
Source priority
attribu.tech determines the traffic source using this priority:
- UTM parameters (
utm_source,utm_medium,utm_campaign) - Ad click IDs (gclid, fbclid, msclkid, etc.)
- Referrer (the previous page that linked to your site)
- Direct (no referrer, no UTMs - they typed your URL or used a bookmark)
Channel grouping
attribu.tech automatically groups traffic into channels based on the source and medium:
| Channel | How it's determined |
|---|---|
| Paid Search | gclid, msclkid present, or medium contains "cpc", "ppc" |
| Paid Social | fbclid, ttclid present with paid medium, or social source + paid medium |
| Organic Search | Referrer from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. |
| Organic Social | Referrer from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. |
| utm_medium = "email" | |
| Affiliate | utm_medium = "affiliate" or ?via= parameter |
| Referral | Has a referrer that doesn't match other channels |
| Direct | No referrer or UTMs |
Cookie duration
The attribu_visitor_id cookie lasts 365 days. This means attribution works even if a visitor returns months later to make a purchase.
Cross-domain attribution
If your site spans multiple domains (e.g. blog.example.com and app.example.com), see the cross-domain tracking guide.