Question from Reddit user:
Hello Guys,
I’m seeing a discrepency in the conversion data reported by the acquisition reports and attribution paths report in my GA4 account. For example, the recent newsletter I sent have received only 1 conversion whereas according the attribution paths report its 3.
I’m using Last click attribution for your information. And the 3 conversions i’m looking at my attribution reports are also from last click where 100% of the credit is being given to my email campaign.
Also we have only one key event which is Purchase
Can anyone enlighten me as to why this discrepency is happening?
Thank you inadvance
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
The discrepancy you are seeing between your standard Acquisition reports (like Acquisition > Traffic acquisition) and the Attribution > Conversion Paths report is due to the fundamental difference in what data those reports are designed to use.
The standard Acquisition reports are based on the User acquisition dimension (the first campaign a user was ever attributed to, typically First Click attribution) or the Session acquisition dimension (the last non-direct click of a session, typically Last Non-Direct Click attribution), but not the Event acquisition dimension.
Conversely, the Attribution Paths report is a specialized report that uses the Event acquisition dimension, meaning it considers all touchpoints that occurred before the conversion event and uses the model you select (Last Click in your case) to distribute credit.
The simple solution is to ensure you are comparing reports that use the same underlying attribution scope and dimension, or to use the Attribution > Model comparison report which is the only standard report that lets you see conversion credit based on your chosen model.
Since you’re using Last Click in the Paths report, the Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report will be your closest match, but it is not a perfect match because it will still use Last Non-Direct Click for cross-session attribution.
The long answer is:
The reason you see $1 conversion in your standard report versus $3 in your Attribution Paths report is the most common confusion point in GA4 and comes down to a critical distinction between three key scopes: User, Session, and Event.
Your standard Acquisition reports are designed to answer questions like “How did I acquire this user?” (using the First Click model) or “What brought the user to the session where the conversion occurred?” (using the Last Non-Direct Click model for the session itself).
When you view the main Acquisition reports, even if you set your property to Last Click attribution, these reports do not necessarily change their core logic, as they are focused on the initial acquisition of the user or session, not the final conversion event.
On the other hand, the Attribution > Conversion Paths report is specifically designed to answer the question:
“Which touchpoints led directly to the conversion event?” This report is where your chosen Last Click model is actually applied to the conversion event itself, which is why it correctly shows $3 conversions credited entirely to the email touchpoint.
The key difference is that the Attribution reports use the Event acquisition dimension, which looks at the sequence of events leading up to the Purchase event, whereas the standard Acquisition reports default to the User acquisition or Session acquisition dimensions.
To fix this and get the $3 conversions reflected consistently, you must use the specialized Attribution reports or the Explorations interface, which will allow you to build a custom report using the Event acquisition dimension.
A long-term, excellent solution to this kind of ambiguity and lack of reporting flexibility is to use the Google Analytics Data API to pull conversion path data, which is then fed into a visualization layer like Looker Studio via the Looker Studio API.
You would start by using the Google Analytics Data API to extract the raw, unfiltered data for your Purchase events, including the full sequence of touchpoints for each conversion, which is information that is difficult to isolate in the standard GA4 interface.
This raw data can be pulled into a data warehouse or cloud storage, where you can then apply your own custom attribution logic – whether it is a true, strict Last Click model or a different rule – before visualizing it.
To make this data even richer, you can use Google Tag Manager along with a server-side environment like Stape or Google Cloud Platform to process the data before it even hits GA4.
This server-side tagging allows you to clean up UTM parameters, enrich the event data with information like an accurate User ID, and guarantee that a consistent conversion_id is sent with all touchpoints related to a single conversion, which is the backbone for reliable path reporting.
By using the Looker Studio API, you can then create a dynamic dashboard that connects to your processed data source, allowing you to instantly switch between attribution models, custom dimensions, and user segments, all of which will completely eliminate the discrepancies caused by the inherent, fixed scopes of the default GA4 reports.
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