What's the Default Attribution Window for Google Ads?

Google Ads' default click-through attribution window is 30 days — if someone clicks your ad and converts within 30 days, Google Ads counts it — while view-through attribution, which tracks people who saw but didn't click your ad, defaults to a much shorter 1 day for standard display ads and 3 days for engaged-view video ads.

Google Ads' Default Windows, By Conversion Type

• Click-through conversion window (default): 30 days
• View-through window, standard display ads: 1 day
• View-through window, engaged-view video ads: 3 days
• Available click-through presets: 1, 3, 7, 30, or 90 days

These defaults apply automatically to any new conversion action unless you customize the window during setup, and per Google's own Help Center documentation, they carry through until you manually change them — a setting easy to overlook since it doesn't require any action to take effect.

Why the Click and View Windows Are So Different

The 30-day click window reflects that a genuine click signals real intent — someone engaged directly with your ad — so Google gives that signal a long runway to convert. A view-through impression is a much weaker signal of intent, since it only means an ad was rendered on screen, not that the person engaged with it at all, which is why Google defaults that window to just 1 to 3 days rather than treating it the same as a click.

What Changing the Window Does and Doesn't Do

Changing a conversion action's attribution window only affects data going forward — it does not retroactively recalculate conversions Google Ads already counted under the old window. A business with a long sales cycle, like a high-consideration B2B service, often benefits from extending the click-through window to 60 or 90 days so conversions that close weeks after the click still get attributed to the ad that started the journey, rather than being missed entirely by the 30-day default.

When the Default Window Undercounts Conversions

A 30-day click window can meaningfully undercount conversions for businesses with sales cycles longer than a month — real estate, enterprise software, or major home renovation projects, for example — since a lead who clicks an ad but doesn't convert until day 45 falls outside the default window entirely and never gets attributed back to that click.

Why This Matters for Smart Bidding

Google's automated bidding strategies, including Target CPA and Target ROAS, learn from the conversion data reported inside whatever attribution window a conversion action uses. A window set too short for a given sales cycle doesn't just undercount conversions in reporting — it also starves the bidding algorithm of real outcome data, which can make Smart Bidding optimize toward the wrong signal simply because a portion of true conversions never entered the training data at all.

Bottom Line

Don't assume Google Ads is capturing every conversion tied to your ads just because tracking is installed — check whether your conversion actions still use the 30-day click / 1-3-day view defaults, and extend the click-through window toward 60 or 90 days if your typical sales cycle runs longer than a month.

Source: Google Ads Help, "About conversion windows" (support.google.com).