The time period over which marketing touches are credited for influencing a conversion. Common AEO lookback windows are 30, 60, 90, or 180 days.
The lookback window determines how far back in time an attribution model looks to credit AI citations for influencing a conversion. A 90-day lookback means an AI citation that influenced a buyer 89 days ago still receives partial credit when the deal closes. Lookback windows must be tuned to your sales cycle: too short and you miss the AEO contribution; too long and you over-credit older touches.
Lookback windows determine what gets attributed and what gets missed. For B2B SaaS with 30–90 day cycles, a 90-day lookback is standard. For enterprise sales (180+ days), longer windows are necessary. Default GA4 attribution settings use a 30-day window, which under-credits AEO for most B2B teams.
A buyer reads a ChatGPT answer about your brand on April 1. They evaluate competitors for 60 days, then book a demo on June 5 and close on July 15. With a 30-day lookback, the April 1 AI citation gets zero credit (it's too old). With a 90-day lookback, the citation gets credit. With a 180-day lookback, even citations from 5 months earlier get partial credit.
The terms in this glossary aren't theoretical — they're what Lantern's product calculates and reports every month for B2B SaaS teams. See yours in 7 days. 14-day free trial.
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