Great post – and series of posts on this subject. I believe that the subject of credit allocation needs to be separated into two realms of conversation, reporting and bid rule logic.

For reporting and analysis purposes, the change in allocation scheme from last click to any of the other schemes you mentioned, (Linear or Weighted Allocation) might not alter the data per keyword enough to alter the short term analysis of the raw data. Therefore, the conclusions from the RKG's study,make perfect sense.

On the other hand if credit allocation is kept in the world of logic for algorithmic bid rules, it may have more of a noticeable impact. Many times even the slightest change in the details of a weight or variable in a formula within bid rule logic can provide a significant change in performance results.

Therefore if these two ways of viewing credit allocation are kept as separate conversations, studies, and tests, we may see more clear conclusions on both sides.

Great post – and series of posts on this subject. I believe that the subject of credit allocation needs to be separated into two realms of conversation, reporting and bid rule logic.

For reporting and analysis purposes, the change in allocation scheme from last click to any of the other schemes you mentioned, (Linear or Weighted Allocation) might not alter the data per keyword enough to alter the short term analysis of the raw data. Therefore, the conclusions from the RKG's study,make perfect sense.

On the other hand if credit allocation is kept in the world of logic for algorithmic bid rules, it may have more of a noticeable impact. Many times even the slightest change in the details of a weight or variable in a formula within bid rule logic can provide a significant change in performance results.

Therefore if these two ways of viewing credit allocation are kept as separate conversations, studies, and tests, we may see more clear conclusions on both sides.

But in the AdWords interface and reports, if a person visits seven times, and only the third visit was via AdWords, then if they visit an eighth time via an organic click, AdWords will still report that as a conversion, because the AdWords cookies last 30 days and are not updated.

So in this sense Google Analytics is showing last click data. AdWords is showing equal click data, giving attribution to the AdWords click no matter whether it was the first click, a middle click or the last click, so long as it happened within the last 30 days.

Or am I missing how it really works? Thanks!