position-based attribution
Also called: u-shaped attribution, u-shaped model, position-based attribution model
Position-based attribution, also called U-shaped attribution, is a multi-touch model that gives most of a conversion's credit to its first and last touchpoints. The standard split is 40% to the first interaction, 40% to the last, and 20% shared across the middle touches.
How the credit splits
Say a user finds you through an organic blog post (first touch), comes back via email, then converts from a branded search click (last touch). Position-based attribution hands 40% of the credit to that blog post, 40% to the branded click, and splits the remaining 20% across the email and any other middle touches. Plot the weights on a bar chart and they form a U, which is where the name comes from.
The model sits between single-touch models (first-click or last-click, which ignore everything else) and algorithmic data-driven attribution. It rewards the channel that started the journey and the channel that closed it, so it suits businesses that value both demand generation and demand capture. The 40/20/40 split is a fixed convention, not a measured fact, and that is its main weakness: every middle interaction shares one thin slice no matter how much it actually influenced the decision.
One currency note that trips people up: Google removed rule-based position-based attribution from GA4. New conversion actions lost it in May 2023, and it was fully gone by November 2023, alongside first-click, linear, and time-decay. Google cited adoption under 3% of Google Ads conversions. GA4 now offers only data-driven attribution and last-click. If you want a position-based view today, you build it in a spreadsheet, a BI tool, or a third-party platform, not inside GA4.
How it affects your traffic
Your attribution choice decides how much of your revenue organic search gets credited for. GA4's default is now data-driven attribution, but many teams still switch to last-click, which hands most conversions to branded search or direct and quietly undervalues the blog posts and top-of-funnel pages that started those journeys. A position-based lens restores 40% credit to that first organic touch, and reading it correctly changes which pages you keep, cut, or expand. Our SEO Audit maps your organic pages to where they sit in the conversion path, so you invest based on real contribution instead of whichever model happens to be the default.
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