Attribution

What it is

Attribution is the answer to a deceptively simple question: when a customer calls, what did they see first? Did they find you through a Google search? An AI assistant? A Facebook ad? A friend's referral? A combination of three of those over two weeks? Attribution tools try to assign credit — sometimes to the last touchpoint ("last-click attribution"), sometimes spread across the chain ("multi-touch").

For local service businesses, perfect attribution is impossible. A customer might see your Google Business Profile on Monday, ask ChatGPT for a recommendation on Tuesday, and call your number on Thursday — and no platform sees the whole chain. What you can do is build good enough attribution: use distinct phone numbers for paid channels (call tracking), watch Google Search Console for what queries are growing, and ask new customers directly.

Why it matters for your business

Without attribution, every channel looks equally important — or equally suspect. With even rough attribution, you can stop spending on channels that don't drive calls and double down on the ones that do. The biggest mistake is over-trusting a single attribution model — last-click especially. Last-click usually overcredits Google search and undercredits AI assistants, social, and word-of-mouth (because all of those tend to come earlier in the journey).

Example

A plumbing company assumed Google ads were driving 80% of their calls because their call-tracking platform attributed most calls there. After adding a one-question "How did you find us?" prompt to their intake form for two months, they discovered that 40% of "Google" calls were actually customers who first heard about them on Nextdoor, then Googled the business name. The ad spend was real but the ads were closing, not opening. They reallocated 25% of the ad budget into Nextdoor presence and total call volume went up.

Related

• Related terms: Impressions, CTR, Branded vs non-branded, How did you find us?