What is an assisted conversion?

A customer asks ChatGPT which backpack to take as a carry-on, lands on your product page from the answer, leaves, and four days later searches for your store's name on Google and buys. If you only look at the last click, the sale belongs to organic search and ChatGPT does not appear. Assisted conversion is analytics vocabulary for that first visit: the channel that helped without closing. It has nothing to do with a store's assisted selling, the kind done by a sales associate or a customer service chat: this is about traffic channels and who gets the credit for an order.

How it works

The idea comes from the Multi-Channel Funnels reports of Universal Analytics, the earlier version of Google Analytics. Those reports were built on conversion paths, the sequence of interactions with your channels (search, campaigns, referrals, email) that led to each conversion, by default those of the last 30 days, with the window adjustable from 1 to 90.⁠^{[1]Google Analytics Help. [UA] About Multi-Channel Funnels [Legacy]} Within a path, a channel could play three roles:⁠^{[2]Google Analytics Help. [UA] Analyze channel contribution with Multi-Channel Funnels [Legacy]}

• Last interaction: the one immediately before the conversion. It takes the credit for the close.
• Assist interaction: any interaction on the path that is not the last one.
• First interaction: the one that opens the path, which is also a type of assist.

With those roles, the assisted conversions report counted, by channel, how many conversions it had assisted and how much they were worth, how many it had closed and how many it had initiated. A ratio summed up the channel's character: near 0, it closes more than it assists; near 1, it assists and closes equally; above 1, it mostly assists.⁠^{[2]Google Analytics Help. [UA] Analyze channel contribution with Multi-Channel Funnels [Legacy]} And a warning from the help page itself that still holds: assists are easily counted twice, because one channel can both assist and close, and an interaction that is in two paths counts toward both conversions.⁠^{[2]Google Analytics Help. [UA] Analyze channel contribution with Multi-Channel Funnels [Legacy]}

Universal Analytics stopped processing data in its standard properties on July 1, 2023, and since July 1, 2024 its data cannot be accessed.⁠^{[3]Google Analytics Help. Universal Analytics is going away} The assisted conversions report disappeared with it.

What replaces it in GA4

GA4 has no column called "assisted conversions." It has the same question with other pieces. First, the name: what you measure as an important action for your business, a purchase or a form, is called a key event, and "conversion" is left for what you share with Google Ads to optimize campaigns.⁠^{[4]Google Analytics Help. Conversions vs. key events in Google Analytics}

The key events attribution paths report (under Advertising) shows the paths users follow to a key event and, in its chart, which channels initiate, assist and close.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report} It splits each path into three stretches: initial touchpoints, the first 25% of the path; mid touchpoints, the middle 50% (empty if the path has fewer than three touchpoints); and final touchpoints, the last 25%. It shows paths of up to 20 touchpoints and data since June 14, 2021.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report} A channel that shows up strongly in the initial and mid touchpoints and little in the final ones is, in the old language, a channel that assists.

Attribution models decide how the credit is split. GA4 offers three: data-driven, which splits the credit according to the calculated contribution of each interaction; paid and organic last click; and Google paid channels last click. The first click, linear, time decay and position-based models went away in November 2023.⁠^{[6]Google Analytics Help. Get started with attribution} And a rule that changes a lot about how you read it: no model gives credit to direct visits, unless the path is made up only of direct visits.⁠^{[6]Google Analytics Help. Get started with attribution}

The attribution window sets how far back it looks. For most key events it is 90 days by default, with a 30- or 60-day option; for acquisition events, 30 days, with a 7-day option. Changing it only affects future data.⁠^{[7]Google Analytics Help. Select attribution settings}

The AI assistants channel. Since May 13, 2026, Google Analytics groups visits whose referrer matches a recognized assistant, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, into a channel of its own, AI Assistant.⁠^{[8]Google Analytics Help. What's new in Google Analytics} The channel also includes Copilot, Deepseek and Grok, and excludes AI Overviews and AI Mode, which go to organic search.⁠^{[9]Google Analytics Help. [GA4] Default channel group} Thanks to that channel, a visit from an assistant can show up in a path as a touchpoint with a name of its own.

In a store

Four purchase paths at a backpack store and who gets the credit under the paid and organic last click model. This is a fictional example: the paths are invented, and the split follows the published rules of that model, which ignores direct visits and gives all the credit to the last channel that was clicked.⁠^{[6]Google Analytics Help. Get started with attribution}

The second row is the one that surprises most: even if the customer comes back by typing the address, the credit goes to the assistant, because direct does not count as long as there is another channel on the path. The first is the case from the introduction: the assistant opened the path and search takes the close. With the data-driven model, the split stops being all or nothing and each touchpoint receives a fraction of the credit.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report} Looking at assists does not change how many sales there are: it changes the story you tell about where they come from.

How to check it

1. In Google Analytics, open Advertising › Key events attribution paths and choose the purchase event.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report}
2. Look at the three stretches of the chart and see which channels weigh in the initial and mid touchpoints versus the final ones.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report}
3. Switch the chart's attribution model between last click and data-driven, and note which channels gain or lose credit.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Key events attribution paths report}
4. Review the attribution window under Admin, in the attribution settings: by default, 90 days for purchases.⁠^{[7]Google Analytics Help. Select attribution settings}
5. Filter by the AI Assistant channel with dates after May 13, 2026, when it began to exist.⁠^{[8]Google Analytics Help. What's new in Google Analytics} Before that date, those visits were spread across other channels.

Related concept: LLM attribution

AI assistant attribution answers which visits and orders arrive from AI assistants, and how much cannot be seen because it arrives with no trace. Assisted conversion answers another question: what role a channel plays inside a path with several touchpoints. You need both. The first says how much AI referral traffic you have and what it buys; the second, whether that traffic opens sales that another channel closes. And neither sees someone who read a recommendation with no link and came back on their own: that influence is outside any path.

To go further, the measurement and verification reading path orders the rest of the terms, and the entry on AI citation explains the step before any visit: an assistant naming your page.