Attribution window, lookback window, conversion window: same mechanic
All three terms describe the same setting: how long after someone clicks or views an ad, captured through your campaign tracking, you're still willing to credit that interaction if they convert later. A 7-day window means a click today only gets credit for a sale up to 7 days from now. A sale on day 8, from that exact same person, falls outside the window and simply doesn't count toward that click, even though it obviously happened because of it.
Why the window length changes your reported numbers, not reality
Changing the window doesn't change when people actually buy. It changes what your reporting is allowed to see and count. A business with a long consideration cycle running a short default window will look like it's underperforming, because most of its real conversions fall outside the window and never get credited to the channel that earned them. Widen that same window and the identical campaign can suddenly look like it performs better, purely because conversions that already existed become visible. No extra sales were created. The business just started measuring more of the truth it already had.
This matters most for anything with a real decision period behind it: considered purchases, higher price points, B2B services. A 1-day or 7-day click window fits an impulse buy reasonably well. It fits a $2,000 service that people research for three weeks not at all, and will make that channel's paid spend look wasted right up until someone widens the window and the same spend suddenly looks like it was working the whole time.
Typical default windows, and why you should still check your own account
Defaults vary by platform, by conversion type inside the same platform, and they change over time. Treat the row below as commonly documented starting points, not settled fact, and confirm the current setting inside your own ad account before drawing conclusions from a report.
| Platform | Commonly documented default | Typically configurable |
|---|---|---|
| Meta ads | 7-day click, 1-day view | Shorter or longer click and view windows, set independently in the attribution settings |
| Google Ads | 30-day click window for search, shorter for display and view-through | Adjustable up to 90 days on most conversion actions |
| TikTok Ads | 7-day click, 1-day view | Similar short-window options, set per campaign |
| A link tracking tool such as Raydar | No chosen ad-style window. Credit is based on the cookie's actual lifetime rather than a number you set | Not applicable in the same sense, since it records the real click, not a modeled estimate |
Attribution window on Meta ads specifically
Meta lets an advertiser choose separate click and view windows in the ads manager's attribution settings, and the setting applies at the account or campaign level rather than per individual ad. A view window credits someone who merely saw the ad without clicking it, which is a distinct idea covered on its own in view-through attribution. The available combinations and the exact default have shifted over the years, most notably around changes to iOS tracking permissions, so treat whatever you find documented anywhere, including here, as a starting point and confirm the live setting before acting on a report. This is also the setting most often behind a mismatch between your own numbers and Meta's, since a shorter window in your analytics than the one Meta is using will always show fewer conversions than Meta claims.
The window your ad platform sets is not the same as what the browser allows
An ad platform can offer you a 30-day or 90-day window in a settings menu, but that number is a promise the platform makes about its own reporting, not a guarantee about how long a browser will actually let a cookie survive. Safari's tracking prevention has, for years, capped how long script-set cookies persist and blocks third-party cookies outright, and other browsers have followed with their own restrictions. A generous attribution window configured in an ad account does not override what the visitor's browser is willing to store. In practice this means the effective window for a meaningful share of visitors, particularly on Safari and iOS, is shorter than the number in the settings screen, and there's no setting anywhere that fixes that gap. It's a hard limit, not a configuration choice.
Lookback window vs conversion window: is there a difference
Not really. Lookback window describes the mechanic from the ad platform's side, looking backward from a conversion event to check whether a qualifying click, identified by its click ID, happened inside the window. Conversion window describes the same span from the click's side, looking forward, asking how long the platform should wait before deciding a click never converted at all. Attribution window is the general, vendor-neutral term that covers both directions. If a piece of documentation uses one term and your ad account uses another, they are almost certainly describing the same setting.
What to do with this
Set the window to match how long your typical customer actually takes to decide, not whatever the platform shipped as a default. If you don't know that number, a link tracking tool that logs the actual gap between a click and a conversion, rather than a modeled estimate, is the fastest way to find it. Raydar's click data pairs a UTM-tagged click with the first-touch and last-touch record for that visitor, so you can see the real interval your customers take before they convert and set ad-platform windows to match reality instead of guessing. From there, first touch and last touch attribution and the broader idea of what attribution actually is are the two pieces that turn a correctly sized window into a number you can trust.