What counts as a first touch?
A first touch is the earliest visit MarqIQ can attribute to a person, and it is learned once rather than kept up to date. This article explains how that visit is recorded, why the record on MarqIQ's server outlives the cookie in the browser, and what stays unknown. If your records show Direct instead of a real source, read Why your traffic shows as Direct first.
Which visit becomes the first touch
The first touch is the earliest visit MarqIQ has ever attributed to that person. Once it is learned it is never replaced — not by a later visit, not by a fresh browser, not by a second form fill.
So in your question: the first visit wins. The second visit is recorded too, as the last touch, in its own set of fields.
How a visit gets a source
On every page load the script works out where the visitor came from, in this order. The first rule that resolves wins.
- A UTM parameter on this visit's link.
- A UTM value already stored for that visitor. A tagged touch is a fact, and it is not replaced by a guess.
- A Tracking URL rule you have set up. A rule is tried before the referrer because it is the more specific of the two.
- The referring site, matched against your referrer mapping.
- Where none of those resolve, the Direct row of your mapping.
On the first visit the script writes that answer into a locked set of cookies. Nine of them: mp_first_source, mp_first_channel, mp_first_utm_campaign, mp_first_utm_content, mp_first_utm_term, three more holding the entry, referring and current URLs, and a sentinel called mp_first_touch_set. Every later page load sees the sentinel and stops. Nothing overwrites those values for as long as the cookies live, which is one year.
When the visitor fills in a form, the script copies those locked values into the hidden attribution fields on it and sends the same values to MarqIQ. Which fields the script fills has its own article, listed under Next steps.
Consent comes first
If you have switched on Wait for consent before sending anything to MarqIQ on the Script & Deploy screen, no cookie is written, nothing is sent and no form field is filled until consent is signalled. Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track are always honoured as an opt-out, whatever that setting says.
Why the cookie alone is not enough
Safari caps cookies written by JavaScript at seven days. Most business buying cycles are longer than seven days. A returning Safari visitor therefore arrives with an empty cookie jar, and the script, seeing no sentinel, locks in whatever brought them back that day.
MarqIQ keeps its own durable record on the server, and that record is what decides. Every time a form fill arrives, MarqIQ looks for the earliest submission it already holds for the same person that carries a first touch — a first source, a first medium or a first campaign is enough. If it finds one, the stored values win and the values in the incoming fill are discarded.
Tip
The entry page and the referring URL travel with the stored first touch as well. Where an older record never captured them, the incoming values fill those two gaps and nothing else.
How an anonymous visit becomes a person
MarqIQ matches an incoming fill to what it already holds in two steps, in this order.
- By email address, when the fill carries one. This is the strong link, and it works across devices and across browsers.
- By visitor id, when the email match found nothing — including a fill whose email address is new to MarqIQ. The id is a random value the script generates the first time it ever sees that browser and keeps in the mp_vid cookie for a year. This is the step that joins a run of anonymous visits to the email somebody gives you later.
So a person who browses anonymously for six weeks and then gives you their email on a demo form is joined up at that moment, and the six-week-old visit becomes their first touch.
Take care
The visitor id is a cookie like any other, so Safari trims it after seven days too. If somebody browses anonymously in Safari for a month and never gives you an email, MarqIQ has nothing durable to join their visits to, and each stretch of visits looks like a different person.
First touch and last touch are separate fields
Both are recorded on every fill, and they answer different questions. Mixing them is the commonest reason two reports disagree about the same campaign.
| Question | Which fields | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| What started this relationship? | First source, first medium, first campaign, first term, first content | The earliest visit MarqIQ ever attributed to the person. Written once. |
| What brought them back this time? | Last source, last medium, last campaign, last term, last content | The visit the form was filled in on. Rewritten on every fill. |
Both sets are sent with every form fill.
What a first touch cannot tell you
Three cases stay unknown, and no tracking script can solve them. Say how many of your records fall into each when you present the numbers.
- A person who first arrived before the script was live. MarqIQ cannot learn a visit that was never recorded, and installing the script today does not fill in last year.
- A person whose first visit happened on a device that was never linked to their email — a phone they browsed on, a work laptop they filled the form in on.
- A visit with nothing to read: no UTM parameter, no referrer and no URL rule that matches. The script resolves no source and locks nothing, so it tries again on the next visit.
Leave the records with no first touch out of the denominator, and say how many there were. Do not guess a source for them.
If it did not work
A person's first touch changed after they filled in a second form
Why: The two fills were never joined to one person. The first fill carried no email address, and by the time the second arrived the mp_vid cookie had gone — expired, cleared, or on a different device — so MarqIQ had no earlier record to prefer and used the new values.
Fix: Ask for an email address on the earliest form in your funnel you reasonably can. The email link is the one that survives a cleared cookie jar and a second device.
First touch is blank on people you know visited
Why: Nothing resolved on their first visit, so nothing was locked. Usually the visit predates the script, or consent was never granted, or the link carried no parameters and the referrer was stripped.
Fix: Open Analysis, choose your tool and open Source truth. It states how many of these people MarqIQ itself captured a first touch for, which tells you whether this is a capture gap or a history gap.
A landing page with a Tracking URL rule on it is not taking the rule
Why: The visitor arrived carrying a tagged touch — a UTM on this visit's link, or one already stored for them. A tagged touch wins over a rule, so the ad or campaign that brought them keeps the credit.
Fix: This is the intended order. If you expected the rule to win, check the link people are arriving on: a rule only decides where neither the link nor the stored values carry UTMs.
First touch and last touch hold the same value on almost every record
Why: The hidden first-touch fields are missing from your forms, so your tool is receiving the current visit under both names.
Fix: Open Tool Operations, pick your tool, then Hidden Form Fields. It lists every form it can see and marks each one "All fields added" or "2/6 added", so you can find the one that was missed.
Next steps
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