Conversion Path

A conversion path is the ordered sequence of channels a user passed through on the way to a conversion.

Every converting user leaves a trail: the channels they arrived from, in order, ending at the conversion. GA4's attribution reporting lays these paths out so you can see how channels combine rather than looking at each in isolation. The path is the raw material every attribution model reads before it decides how to split credit.

A single path might read Paid Social, then Organic Search, then Email, then a purchase. That tells you those three channels worked together on one journey. Fifty users sharing that same pattern tells you it is a repeatable route to conversion, not a fluke.

Paths only show the channels GA4 could observe. Cross-device gaps, blocked cookies, and dark-social visits that land as Direct all mean the real journey is often longer and messier than the recorded path. Read paths as a partial map, and be suspicious when Direct shows up as the mysterious first touch.

The path you see is the journey minus everything the tracking missed.