GA4 (Google Analytics 4) Model comparison report in Attribution

Last Updated: February 23, 2023

Table of contents

What is Model Comparison in GA4?

As the name suggests, the Model Comparison report in GA4 is used to compare different attribution models to each other.

Such comparison is carried out to identify new optimization opportunities by valuating a marketing channel under different attribution models.

What are the requirements for using the GA4 Model Comparison report?

The primary requirement for using the Model Comparison report in GA4 is ecommerce tracking setup and/or goal conversion tracking setup for your GA4 property.

Your GA4 property needs to have goal conversion and/or ecommerce conversion data before you can use and benefit from the GA4 Model Comparison report.

Ideally, your GA4 reporting view must have at least 30 days of historical data, so your data analysis is statistically significant.

If you are using Google Ads, then make sure that you link your GA4 property with your Google Ads account.

How to use the Model Comparison in GA4?

In order to access and use the Model Comparison in GA4, follow the steps below:

Step-1: Navigate to your GA4 property.

Step-2: Click on the ‘Advertising’ link from the left-hand side navigation:

You should now see the Advertising Snapshot report:

Step-3: Click on the ‘Model comparison’ link from the left-hand side navigation:

Step-4: Select the date range from the date picker drop-down menu:

The longer the date range you select, the more statistically significant the reported data would be.

Note: The Model Comparison report includes data from June 14, 2021, onwards.

Step-5: Click on the ‘conversion events’ drop-down menu:

conversion events Model Comparison Report ga4

Step-6: Select the conversion event(s) for which you want to see the data in your Model comparison report. Deselect all other conversion events and then click on the ‘Apply‘ button:

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You would now see the Model Comparison report only for the selected conversion event (in our case, the ‘purchase’ event):

Note: By default, the Model Comparison report gives an overview of all your conversion events.

Step-7: Click on the ‘Edit Comparison‘ button:

You should now see an overlay on the right-hand side of your screen:

Step-8: Change the reporting time to ‘Interaction time’ (optional).

To do that, select the ‘Interaction time’ radio button:

Interaction time: Use this setting if you want the model comparison report to include all touchpoints that happened with the date range you selected.

Conversion time: Use this setting if you want the model comparison report to include only those touchpoints that lead to conversions and that happened with the date range you selected.

Note: By default, the model comparison report uses ‘conversion time’ as the reporting time.

Step-9: By default, the Model Comparison report shows data for all users. If you want to see data for only a segment of users, then click on the ‘Add filter’ button:

Note: The ‘Add filter’ feature works just like the GA4 Comparisons feature.

Step-10: Select the primary dimension you want to use for your analysis from the data table (optional):

Let’s select ‘Source/medium’ as the primary dimension:

Step-11: Apply a secondary dimension to your data table (optional).

To do that, click on the ‘+’ button next to the primary dimension drop-down menu:

Step-12: Select the dimension that you want to use as the secondary dimension.

Let’s select ‘Device Category’:

device category secondary dimension ga4 2

Step-13: Use the search feature on the reporting interface to filter out specific traffic sources (optional).

Let’s filter out all the organic traffic sources.

To do that, type ‘organic’ in the search box and then press the enter key:

Step-14: Select the reference attribution model from the first attribution model drop-down menu.

Let’s select the ‘first click’ model:

Select the reference attribution model first click

Step-15: Select the comparison attribution model from the second attribution model drop-down menu.

Let’s select the ‘Time decay model’:

Select the comparison attribution model ga4

Select the comparison attribution model time decay ga4

Step-16: Click on the ‘<’ button to see the Model Comparison report in the full view mode:

Step-17: Look at the % change column of the report:

percentage change column Model Comparison Report ga4

Following is the enlarged view of the data table:

From the screenshot above, we can conclude that the Conversions from the Google Organic search on desktop devices are overvalued by 40.01% under the time decay model.

Whereas the Revenue (i.e. sales) from the Google Organic search on desktop devices is overvalued by 30.36% under the time decay model.

That’s the kind of insight you can get from the model comparison report in GA4.

The Model Comparison report provides the following features for easy navigation:

Use the search box to filter out a specific set of data.

To use the search functionality, type your search term and then press the enter key.

#2 Rows per page

By default, the data table of the Model Comparison report shows only 10 rows per page of the report.

data table rows Model Comparison Report ga4

If you want to see more than 10 rows, then click on the ‘Rows per page’ drop-down menu and select the desired number of rows to be displayed:

You can display up to 250 rows per page of the Model comparison report in GA4:

#3 Go to

If you want to quickly navigate to a particular row of the data table of the Model comparison report, then type the row number in the text box next to ‘Go to’ (you don’t need to press the enter key):

go to row of the data table of Model comparison report in GA4

#4 Pagination

The Model Comparison report has a pagination feature built-in through which you can navigate back and forth between various pages of the report:

page navigation Model Comparison Report ga4

#1 Google Analytics 4 Intro

#2 Google Analytics 4 Property

#3 Google Analytics 4 Integrations

#4 Google Analytics 4 Events

#5 Google Analytics 4 Conversions

#6 Google Analytics 4 Dimensions

#7 Google Analytics 4 Metrics

#8 Google Analytics 4 Ecommerce

GA4 (Google Analytics 4) Ecommerce Tracking via GTM – Tutorial

#9 Google Analytics 4 Specialized Tracking

#10 Google Analytics 4 filters

#11 Google Analytics 4 Explorations

#12 Google Analytics 4 Advanced

#13 Google Analytics 4 Reports

#14 Google Analytics 4 Attribution

#15 Google Analytics 4 Audiences

#16 Google Analytics 4 BigQuery

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