All About Google Analytics Goals
July 7, 2007 by Justin Cutroni 
Google Analytics Goals are a way to measure conversions on your website. A conversion occurs when a visitor does something you want them to do. This could be completing some type of high value process or viewing a specific page on your website.
Setting up goals is one of the most important steps when configuring Google Analytics. Without goals, there is no easy way to measure conversions. If you’re unfamiliar with conversion, or the related metric conversion rate, please take a moment to read about why both of these metrics matter. In general, counting the number of conversions and tracking the conversions rate is a good way to measure the success of your website.
During this post I’m only going to cover how goals work and how to set them up. I’ll discuss how to use goals in my next post.
What’s A Goal (Technical)?
At its core, a goal is just a pageview. It’s could be a specific page on your website that you want the visitor to see or the page that is displayed when a visitor has completed a process. A goal is literally defined by the URL of said page. As GA processes site data, it increments the goal counter each time a pageview for the ‘goal’ page is found. It should be noted that if the goal page is found multiple times in a single visit then goal counter is only incremented once.
I’ll explain a little bit more about how goals work, at a technical level, at the end of this post. There’s a few things I need to cover before we get into the nitty-gritty tech stuff.
Creating A Goal
There are multiple ways to define a goal. The method you choose depends on the complexity of your website. The easiest way to create a goal is to copy the URL of your goal page from a browser into the Goal URL text field. So, if the process ends with http://www.epikone.com/thankyou.php, enter http://www.epikone.com/thankyou.php in the Goal URL field. Here’s another example. If the URL of the goal page is http://www.epikone.com/thankyou.php?submit=true then enter http://www.epikone.com/thankyou.php?submit=true into the Goal UL field.
A goal can also be defined using a regular expression. Rather than enter an exact URL in the Goal URL field you can enter a regular expression. This is particularly helpful if the website is dynamic. If the goal page contains a unique identifier then you can’t copy and paste a URL into the Goal URL field. Every goal URL will be different. You need to use a regular expression for the Goal URL. I’ll discuss this below in the Additional Settings section.
Goal Name
When defining a goal you also need to give the goal a name. There’s nothing special here. The Goal name will be used to identify the goal in the Google Analytics reports. Don’t use anything too long, it can make the reports difficult to read.
Activate Goal
The Activate Goal setting is an on-off switch. Switching the setting to ‘Off’ will stop tracking for the goal. Why would you want to turn a goal off? Google Analytics will calculate an overall website conversion rate using all of the goals you define for the site. If you create a goal that is temporary, say for a specific campaign, then it could artificially skew the overall site conversion rate if you leave the goal on after the campaign, ends.
Additional Settings
Each goal has an Additional Settings section that can help configuration in unique situations. It’s located at the bottom of the page under the Funnel settings. By the way, you do not need to create a funnel when you create a goal. Defining a funnel is optional.
Case Sensitive
The Case sensitive setting can be used with websites that have mixed-case URLs. So, if your Goal URL value is case sensitive then click the Yes radio button. However, profile filters can affect this setting. I’ll explain more at the end of this post.
Match Type
The Match Type setting is a powerful setting that can aid in goal tracking. For example, if each goal page contains a unique customer identifier then it will be impossible to paste a single URL into the Goal URL field without the use of the more sophisticated match types. Google Analytics has three different match types that can be used for Goals and Funnels.
Exact Match
When you choose Exact Match the value in the Goal URL field must exactly match the URL of the goal page displayed in the location bar of the visitor’s browser. This is the setting you want to choose if you copy the URL from the browser and paste it into the Goal URL field. If your website uses a unique identifier in the goal URL (like a visitor ID number or an order ID number) do NOT use an Exact Match. Use a Head Match or a Regular Expression.
Head Match
The Head Match is like a light-weight regular expression. You should use a head match when a small part of the goal URL differs from one visitor to another. With a head match, if the value entered into the Goal URL matches any part of the URL in the visitor’s browser then the goal will be counted. The Head Match will match both path data and query string variables.
For example, if there is a unique identifier in the goal URL then you can use the head match to define the goal. Let’s say the Goal URL for a visitor is http://www.epikone.com/thanks.html?submit=true&id=12345. The id query string parameter is a unique identifier that will change from one visitor to the next. So, I could use a HEad Match and enter the following into the Goal URL: http://www.epikone.com/thanks.html?submit=true. Because the Goal URL matches PART of the actual URL for the goal page, GA will count this goal.
Regular Expression
This setting defines a goal using a regular expression. If the regular expression entered into the Goal URL matches any part of the goal URL then the goal counter is incremented. Using a regular expression is particularly useful because it let’s ‘wrap up’ goal tracking so you track multiple goals in a single goal. You can track multiple goals using a single goal because a regular expression can match multiple URLs. For example, let’s say you want to create a goal that tracks and PDF file download. You could enter \.pdf into the Goal URL field. I actually wrote about using regular expressions to get more out of goals last year.
Goal Value
The final option in the Additional Settings section is Goal Value. Use this field to monetize non-e-commerce goals. For example, if each Contact Form submitted by a user is worth $100, enter 100 in the Goal Value field. Google Analytics will use 100 to calculate return on investment (ROI) and other revenue based calculations. If e-commerce tracking is active for a profile, and you would like to use e-commerce data for your goals, simply leave the goal value field blank. Google Analytics will pull in the e-commerce data.
One thing to note is that the Additional Settings are applied to both the values in the Goal URL and Funnel steps. I know I’m not covering funnels in this post, but this is a common mistake. It is not possible to use an Exact Match for your funnel steps and a Regular Expression for the Goal URL.
Tips, Gotchas & More
Let’s dig a bit deeper and learn how GA actually counts goals. During data processing the value you use to define a goal is compared to the Request URI value. You remember the Request URI, right? It’s part of the URL (everything after the .com, .net or .org). I know this seems strange especially because a goal can be defined by a complete URL, but this is how the data processing works.
It is important to understand that the Request URI is used during goal processing because if you create a filter that modifies the Request URI then it might break your goals.
Here’s an example. Let’s say the Request URI, in its original form, is /pages/html/index.html. You decide to modify this value using an advanced filter and it becomes /pages/index.html. If you define a goal using /pages/html/index.html then the goal will not work. The reason is that the Request URI (/pages/index.html), which was changed by the advanced filter, no longer matches the value entered as a goal (/pages/html/index.html).
How about another example? If you force the case of the Request URI to lowercase, and then define a filter using all uppercase characters AND specify that the goal is case sensitive, then the goal will not work. Get it?
I know this seems strange, especially when most people use an exact match to define their goals. But that’s the way goals work, honest! Don’t be alarmed by this. Using an Exact Match is a perfectly fine way to define a goal.
Here’s a tip. You can also define goals based on data created by urchinTracker(). Remember, if you pass a value to urchinTracker() then that data becomes a pageview in Google Analytics. These pageviews can then be defined as goals. You can read more about urchinTracker() in this series of posts. I’m using this technique to track RSS subscriptions on my blog.
And finally… A great way to debug goals is to use the Top Content report. Remember, a goal is just a pageview. If GA is reporting 0 goals, then check the top content report. Does the goal page appear in the Top Content report? If it’s missing, then there is probably an issue with your page tags. But, if the goal page is present in the Top Content report then there is probably an issue with your goal setup.
Wow… that’s a long post. Does it all make sense? Leave a comment and let me know!
87 Responses to “All About Google Analytics Goals”
Very good explanation on how GA goal works! Thank you! :)
Only a question… the only way to count with a goal the “pageviews” instead of the “unique pageviews” is to pass values to urchinTracker()?
And this configuration can crete conflict to the natural counter of pageviews and unique pageviews on that pages?
Thanks,
Tucana
By Tucana on Jul 9, 2007
Hi Tucana,
A goal can be defined by a virtual pageview that is created using urchinTracker(). For example, when you click on the RSS subscription icons I call urchinTracker and create a pageview for /blog/rss. I then created a goal for RSS subscription and entered /blog/rss into the goal URL.
The number of goals should match (or be close to) the number of Unique Pageviews for a page. Google Analytics counts the number of goals based on Unique Pageviews, not pageviews. This can’t be changed.
Sorry if that was confusing.
Justin
By Justin on Jul 9, 2007
Great article, really looking forward to later installments on funnel etc. It would be good to cover some edge cases: Creating a goal is not retroactive. Disabling a goal does not clear past , that disabling a goal does not completely clear past “achievements”, so if you repurpose the goal for something new later, the “achievements” come back. There are probably more, but those were the ones we encountered (and there are definitely more with funnels).
By Gleb Arshinov on Jul 9, 2007
Hi Gleb,
Thanks for adding to the discussion. You make a great point. Creating a goal, or changing a goal, has no impact on historical data. That’s a great point. Many people forget that changes made to a GA configuration do not alter the historical data.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
Justin
By Justin on Jul 9, 2007
Hi Justin,
thanks for the reply, I was confused because I don’t have read your old post (august 2006) on GA Goals, now I have understand better the virtual pages created calling urchinTracker().
Finally there is no way to track with GA Goals the total pageviews on a specific page of a site?
For example a site that is lead generator wants to track all the emails generated (pageviews of the confirmation page), not only the unique emails (unique pageviews of the confirmation page).
Thanks,
Tucana
By Tucana on Jul 10, 2007
Tucana,
Correct. The number of coal conversions should match the number of unique pageviews for the goal page and not the total number of pageviews.
Hope that helps.
Justin
By Justin on Jul 11, 2007
Your wrote:
“If e-commerce tracking is active for a profile, and you would like to use e-commerce data for your goals, simply leave the goal value field blank. Google Analytics will pull in the e-commerce data.”
I have been recently told by my Google rep that with v2 of GA, this no longer works, but I am just having trouble believing it. Do you have the dynamic goal value working?
By Chris on Jul 17, 2007
Hey Chris,
The new GA should use the e-commerce value for the goal if the goal value is left blank. I have not heard anything contrary to this.
I’m not exactly sure I know what you mean by dynamic goal value. The only way a goal can have a dynamic value is if the e-commerce tracking code is used.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading.
Justin
By Justin on Jul 17, 2007
By dynamic goal value, I mean if you leave it blank, it grabs whatever the value of the ecommerce transaction is (when the ecommerce tracking code is used). I can’t get this to work (although I believe we had it working in GA v1) and was wondering if you have a profile that is currently working by grabbing the values of your ecommerce transactions and attributing that to the goal.
I have left the field blank, installed ecommerce tracking and I am not getting any values. When I contact my adwords rep, he investigated and told me that the value can now only be static…which I am having trouble believing (accepting ;))…
By Chris on Jul 18, 2007
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the clarification. GA should be using e-commerce value for the goal. The functionality in V2 should be the same. It does appear that this is currently broken, but I’ll check.
I’ve got some e-commerce profiles that are collecting e-commerce data but not applying it to the goal, which is wrong.
Thanks for the heads up and I’ll see what I can do.
Justin
By Justin on Jul 18, 2007
Hey guys, do i need to put the Analytics code on all the pages in the funnel i’m creating?
By George on Jul 24, 2007
Hey, what a great post! But I have one problem with google analytics right now and that is, how do you remove goals? I didn’t have it propertly installed, and now they are annoying to see!
Any suggestions? thanks
By brian on Aug 20, 2007
Hi Brian,
Hmmm, I’m not quite sure what you mean. Are you asking how to remove old goal data from the reports? If so, you can’t. Once the data has been processed and is in the reports it can not be removed.
Or, are you asking how to turn a goal off? In that case you can do two things. First, you can use the ‘Activate Goal’ setting. It’s located under the Goal Name field. Or you can simply erase the value for Goal Name and Goal URL.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading!
Justin
By Justin on Aug 21, 2007
Justin,
Do you have any new information about this?
—–
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the clarification. GA should be using e-commerce value for the goal. The functionality in V2 should be the same. It does appear that this is currently broken, but I’ll check.
I’ve got some e-commerce profiles that are collecting e-commerce data but not applying it to the goal, which is wrong.
Thanks for the heads up and I’ll see what I can do.
Justin
——
I am still having a problem getting this to work.
Thanks,
–Mike
By Michael on Aug 21, 2007
Hi Mike,
Sorry, things have been a bit crazy so I haven’t followed up.
Justin
By Justin on Aug 22, 2007
Hi Justin,
I’m trying to set up a 3 step goal funnel, but the third step is showing 100% conversion. Looking at examples of other funnels, I can’t see what we’re doing wrong.
Does it have any impact if the url for the final 2 steps is https?
Thanks,
Alex
By Alex on Aug 24, 2007
Hi Alex,
To answer your second question, no. It does not matter if the second step is on a secure server.
Are you using a regular expression or head match to define the page that is showing 100% conversion? If so, it could be that the expression is matching too many URLs. I would also take the time to walk through the process on your site. Maybe the page is actually coming up more than you expect.
Hope that helps.
Justin
By Justin on Aug 24, 2007
Hi Justin
I am also having problems getting the ecommerce value to the a goal value. I’m on a search now, I’ll post anything I find.
Simon
By Simon Luijk on Sep 12, 2007
So this is the responce I got from Google.
Thank you for your message regarding the Goal Value. Please know that it is not possible to use actual e-commerce values in your goals. I apologize for the confusion. To view the e-commerce data for your goals, please visit the E-commerce section in your account.
By Simon on Sep 12, 2007
Hi Simon,
Thanks for doing some leg work and contacting Google. I checked some data and you’re right. E-commerce values are not being used as conversion values. I’ll need to follow up with my contacts on the support team for additional information. I know that initially the e-commerce data was supposed to be used as the goal value.
Thanks for your help.
Justin
By Justin on Sep 13, 2007
Hi Justin,
I have 2 websites where people can subscribe to my newsletter. It’s the same list and the “thank you page” (on Site A) is shown whether they subscribe from Site A or Site B.
I’d like to be able to use GA to measure the conversion rate for each site. I’d rather not have a second thankyou page as I keep updating it with special offers etc.
I’ve searched the groups, GA help, and your post but this multi-site to 1 goal tracking is not so clearly explained.
It’s not clear to me how to set this up? I have a profile set up for each site but not sure what tracking code to use on the thankyou page and what else I need to do?
-Peter
By Peter Koning on Sep 26, 2007
Hi Peter,
Here’s what I would try…
First, if you have multiple domains then you need to use the cross-domain tracking feature in GA. The reason is that you want to originating source for each conversion.
To determine which site the visitor was on prior to the thank you page you can use the reverse goal path report.
Good luck,
Justin
By Justin on Oct 6, 2007
Hi Justin,
I have some question regarding setting up funnels.
I have set up a goal where the user purchase the item from my website and there are various ways to get to the goals. Here are few simplified examples:
I.
1. Page where the item is listed
2. Click on buy item from the list page
3. Confirmation page
4. Thank you page (Goal)
II.
1. Page where the item is listed
2. View the details of the item (new page)
3. Click on buy item from the detail page
4. Confirmation page
5. Thank you page (Goal)
Is there a way to setup only one goal for this particular goal?
Will this funnel tracks both cases above,
Step 1: List Page
Step 2: Detail Page
Step 3: Confirmation Page
Goal : Thank you page
?
Thanks
Eric
By Eric Purwaka on Nov 5, 2007
Hey Eric,
It’s really hard to ‘lengthen’ a funnel in Google analytics. This is complicated bythe fact tht GA has some funny behavior when it comes to funnels. Here’s what I mean. If a visitor starts a funnel, and completes a funnel, but does not hit all of the pages inthe funnel, GA will ‘backfill’ the funnel to make it appear as though they did hit all the pages. Why, I’m not sure. It will still show all the entrances and exits as well.
So, knowing this, you could create a funnel for the longest path on your site. Then use it to see where people are entering and leaving. I would also suggest using the navigation summary for the various pages in the funnel to gain more insight into the exact movement between funnel pages.
Hope that helps and thanks so much for reading.
Justin
By Justin on Nov 17, 2007
HI,
I have a problem; I want to track the funnel people use to order from my site. They can come to a hotel page (I have two deferent hotel page, one a regular one and one as a landing page from Addwords)and go directly to the order form or go through the shopping cart first.
Since in both cases the first page is the same and the goal page is the same, I get the same results (as you explained). Any idea how to solve that? Thanks
By rami gur on Dec 6, 2007
Hi Rami,
You need to change the pageview that is registered for either the goal page or the initial page. Essentially you need to differentiate the pageviews. Check out this post on using urchinTracker() to differentiate pageviews.
Good luck,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Dec 9, 2007
Wow, I’m very impressed with your knowledge off many apects of site analytics, thanks again! Question….
In Google Analytics, for the Traffic Source report for Source/Medium, i was testing new links and I’m getting 0 as the number of visits for one of the links. Have you seen this before? The other links report fine.
myspace / banner 0 0.00% 0.00% $0.00
Thank you
By Jacob on Dec 14, 2007
Hi Jacob,
Thanks for the comment, I’m glad you find the blog useful.
If you’re seeing ‘myspace / banner’ in the reports then you should have data. I would double check that the tracking cookies are set correctly. Try clicking on the banner and, once you’re on your site, check your cookies. You should see one named _utmz and you should see data about the banner.
Hope that helps and thanks again for reading.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Dec 14, 2007
Justin,
If I have two distinct conversion paths that lead to the same thank you page, is there any way to track the goals separately by using filters? I can’t edit the GA code since it’s on a 3rd party shopping cart.
Thanks.
Tyson
By Tyson on Jan 3, 2008
Hi Justin,
Any idea what can be causing a pretty big discrepancy in the goal conversion numbers on the goals “Overview” page against the numbers in the “Funnel Visualization” page?
Let me explain further: I have a goal in place on my website with 5 steps. On Google Analytics, the overview page says I have 114 conversions, but when I go on the Funnel visualization page I realize I have only 52 total conversions (”52 visitors finished”).
Can it be because “required step” should not be checked? I have no clue about such a discrepancy between numbers.
Any idea?
Thanks!
By Christophe on Jan 9, 2008
Tyson,
There is only one way to diferentiate the conversions, and that’s using the funnel visualization report.
Try using the ‘required Step’ setting in the funnel visualization report. This setting mandates that the conversion process include a specific step. If it does not, then the funnel visualization report will not count a conversions.
Christophe,
Your problem is related to the required step setting. Check out what Tyson is trying to do.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jan 11, 2008
I am a new user to google analytics and have just set a goal and filters; however, I found that the URL address that I had typed in are incorrect. Any idea how to go back and revise it?
Any help would be much appreciated!
By cherilyn on Jan 29, 2008
Hi
Is there a way to view the visitor source for those visitors that have completed a goal? ie if 100 people have signed up to my newsletter (and the thank you page is the goal) I would like to know how they got to the site ie which search terms they used in google, etc.
I know I can see the funnel and previous pages using reverse path, but that doesn’t seem to tell me how they got to the site in the first place and I want to know which are my most valuable organic search terms.
Many thanks
Bronwen
By Bronwen on Feb 5, 2008
Hi Cherilyn,
There is no way to change the historical data in Google Analytics. Once the data has been processed and is in GA’s database it can never be modified. You can still modify the URL used for the goal, but it will only affect future data, not historical data.
Thanks for reading,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jun 24, 2008
Bronwen,
When looking at any report, just click on the Goal Conversion tab to view conversions. So, if you are looking at keyword data, and you click on the Goal Conversion tab, then GA will show you the conversions for each keyword.
Good luck with your analysis!
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jun 25, 2008
What would the potential difference between the number of unique pageviews and analytics goals be due to?
By Joseph on Jul 3, 2008
Hi Joseph,
If the number of unique PV is not matching the number of conversions you may want to check how the goal is defined. There may be an issue with the regular expression used or head match that is used.
Hope that puts you on the right track.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jul 3, 2008
I’m tracking a download page as a goal, however, sometimes users visit to download more than once. Is there any way to only measure unique URLs for a goal? Every user has a different receipt #, so if I can track just the unique pages matching a regex, it would do the trick.
Hope that makes sense.
By Burton Kent on Jul 10, 2008
Hi Kent,
Google will only track one conversion per visit. So you shouldn’t have to worry about multiple conversions for the same goal. This also applies if you are defining your goal as a reg ex, which will also solve your second issue.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading the blog.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jul 10, 2008
We’re working on a licensing agreement with an association so that we can use their publications. One of the factors in establishing the licensing fees is the number of users who will download association-based information from our web site.We want to track how many unique individuals view a page and how many unique individuals download a document. Would you please confirm that this type of tracking can be done with GA?
Thank you!
By Carla Christensen on Jul 18, 2008
Hi Carla,
Google Analytics does not track how many unique people visit a specific page or download a file. It tracks how many visits include a specific page.
As a workaround, you could do is create a profile for the specific pages and files that you want to track and then use the Absolute Unique Visitors report to identify the number of people that viewed the content.
Hope that clarifies things. Thanks for the question.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Jul 18, 2008
Hi,
how to setup GOAL URL for fuly dynamic URL like this example:
http://www.shopcentar.hr/webhosting/web_hosting_index.php?http_page=hosting/web_hosting_index.php&session=c45fcee7cf84461e0eaf3b347a22c1dd50fe92b650dd93ddb75f94efdc33f95f&http_color=gray&http_lang=cro&http_button=select&http_currency=HRK
So GOAL URL must be
/webhosting/web_hosting_index.php
But google dont count my GOLAS.
Please give me a clue.
Regards, Sasa R.
http://www.shopcentar.hr
.mobi
.com .eu .net .biz .info .org .tv
.in .cc .ws .cn .com.hr .eu.com
By crokodil on Aug 28, 2008
Hi crokodil,
I would double check to insure that you are using a ‘head’ match, and not an exact match or a regular expression.
Also, you may want to make sure that the page is tagged correctly. Try looking in your top content report for the page that you have identified as your goal page. If you can’t find it in your top content report then there is an issue with the page tag.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Aug 28, 2008
Hi,
sorry, I forget to add on that page google tracker script “#$%&/().
What to say :)))
But you are help me to get solution becouse I cannot find that pages in report :)))
Many thanks.
Have a nice day.
bye, Sasa
Regards, Sasa R.
http://www.shopcentar.hr
.mobi
.com .eu .net .biz .info .org .tv
.in .cc .ws .cn .com.hr .eu.com
By crokodil on Aug 28, 2008
I’m usually pretty good with setting up analytics, goals, filters, etc… This is stumping me. For some reason this isn’t working. How would I setup a goal conversion for a url like this:
https://www.abcd.com/directory/index.php?affiliate=0
I tried head match:
^/directory/index.php\?
^/directory/index.php?affiliate
Neither of these are working… I just don’t understand why. I’m usually really good with analytics. What am I missing here?
By internet marketing secrets on Dec 18, 2008
Can I put Google Analytics code in all website pages?
By Steve on Jan 29, 2009
IMS,
It looks like you’re using a reg ex with a head match. You need to change the match type to reg ex.
Steve,
Yes, you can, and in my opinion, you should put the GA code on all the pages on your site. If you don’t add the code to a page then you won’t get any data for that page.
Thanks for the questions,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Feb 11, 2009
Very good explanation. But one thing i want to ask is Can we give website folder name in Goal URL?. I want to track folder of my website which contains all the articles. How can i track folders?. Actually my objective is to find out the relationship between the adsense and goals. Please let me know if there is any article regarding this.
By Gunjan on Feb 12, 2009
Gunjan,
It sounds like you want to create a goal for all pages in a certain directory on your site. In this case use a regular expression for the goal URL. For example, if the you want to track a goal for every page in the blog directory then the reg ex would look like this:
/blog/
Remember, a visitor can only convert one per visit. So if the visitor views 10 pages in the blog directory GA will still only count 1 conversion.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Feb 12, 2009
Really good article, allready add to favorites.
I have a goal that is to know how many people register at this site: http://www.soytuauto.com/registro.php but the problem is that the URI does not change during the process of registration like http://www.soytuauto.com/thanks.php. Is there a way to know how many people go through the funnel and how many stay in the way?
Thanks,
Juanca
By Desarrollo Web on Feb 19, 2009
Juanca,
You need to create a virtual pageview. This is done by manually manipulating the JS at the server level. You need to add some server level code that adds a value to urchinTracker(), or trackPageview(). This value, which is placed in the parens, will become a “virtual” pageview in GA. The result is the URL will remain the same, but you will get a different pageview in GA. You can then use this pageview as a goal URL.
This post on tracking clicks in GA may help.
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Feb 24, 2009
Thanx, that’s just what I started to do :).
Best,
Juanca
By Desarrollo Web on Feb 25, 2009
Hi, Justin
we have a problem with goals management. We use regular expressions as match type: the page marks appers in contents table indeed, even when the reg exp is provided in “looking for a page that contains”, but not every view pages has relation as goal, how is it possible?
Thanks in advance.
By José Antonio on Mar 5, 2009
Jose,
GA only counts one goal per visit. This means that the number of conversions will not match the number of pageviews. Rather it will match the number of unique pageviews.
Why does Google do it this way? I’m not sure, but I think it’s due to their long term focus on commerce, and people usually only submit one transaction per visit.
Thanks for the question,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Mar 12, 2009
Hi Justin,
I have already successfully set up a goal for our company website but I have a second goal I would like to add entirely separate from the first. Is that a possibility?
Thanks,
Brandy
By Brandy on Mar 16, 2009
Hi, great article and very informative. I’m new to GA and tasked with getting some goals set up, so I’m doing lots of research.
One thing I’m wondering, and I don’t really see this touched on a lot in my reading (at least haven’t seen it so far) is how AdWords ties in with Analytics Goals…or if it even does. Just trying to put a picture together. Any thoughts?
By Amy on Mar 17, 2009
Hi Amy,
To connect a conversion to AdWords requires link tagging. Conversion tracking and campaign racking are actually two very difference configuration steps and both are critical. Once you set up goals and tag all of your campaign links then GA wil link conversions to your marketing (ie AdWords) campaigns.
You can read more about campaign tracking in this series of posts.
Hope that helps,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Mar 18, 2009
Brandy,
You can set up 4 goals per profile in Google Analytics. Check your profile settings, Goals section. You should see 4 line items to add goals.
Hope that helps,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Mar 18, 2009
Justin,
Thanks for the reply re: goals and AdWords. However, I would love some clarification…does this apply even if your goals are NOT advertising campaigns? I’d think the answer would be no.
Also…re: link tracking. We already track our campaigns in a 3rd party tool that basically tracks things in exactly the same way…is it really necessary to also do Google link tagging? It seems redundant to what we’re already doing.
By Amy on Mar 19, 2009
Amy,
Goals are completely independant of advertising campaign. Google links a conversion to a visitor’s source based on the value in the tracking cookies. If the cookie says campaign, then the conversion gets attributed to the campaign. If the cookie says referral then the conversion goes to the referral.
If you’ve already tagged your links with another tool’s campaign parameters you can tweak GA to use those parameters. Heck out some of this info from the GA Code site.
Best,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Mar 19, 2009
Unfortunately, the links are not tagged…the way it works is, I pass a campaign ID value through to our product as a hidden form field. The campaign is set up within the product with the parameters of vendor, medium, etc. so the reporting on that stuff has to be done within that tool. :-/
By Amy on Mar 19, 2009
Amy, sounds like you’re SOL. If there are no parameters in the URL when the visitor lands on the site then GA can’t identify where the visitor came from. Even if you have a single ID number in the URL we need more info.
Hope that clarifies things…
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Mar 19, 2009
Good Post. I have one question. Is it possible to count the same goal during the same visit more than once? I have a site that requires users to search for information and then they have the option to modify their search. The search button is my goal. I would like to count multiple searches more than once. At the moment Google Analytics counts multiple searches as one conversion. Thank you
By Rhonda on Apr 6, 2009
Hi Justin,
I am trying to use Goals with Protx eccomerce on our site, but so far, there have been no completed goals recorded (there have been sales so this there should be goals reported), I am using “/store/order-complete/?crypt=” head match for the following unique (example) url:
/store/order-complete/?crypt=xxrandomxx
now, as I was getting no data back I checked in Top Content reporting as you suggested, and noticed that the goal pages were coming up, but as the following:
/store/order-complete//?crypt=xxrandomxx
Notice how google analytics is picking up // (double slash) instead of a single /.
Why would it be doing this? I have gone through all the steps on our site, and all the URLs only ever exhibit 1 slash.
Many thanks for your time
By Sam on Apr 16, 2009
Sam,
Interesting, not sure why there is a double slash. Are you using some type of filter to modify the Request URI?
My suggestion would be to use a head match on the following value:
/store/order-complete/
Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading the blog.
Jusitn
By Justin Cutroni on Apr 16, 2009
Rhonda,
No. GA will only count one conversion per goal, per visit. What you may want to do is manually calculate conversion rate using pageviews OR configure GA to count an e-commerce transaction when the button is clicked. GA will count multiple transactions per visit.
Thanks for the question,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on Apr 16, 2009
I am trying to set a goal of captured email address. The visitor fills out a 4 step form that is powered by a data base. The URL doesn’t change as a visitor goes from step to step so I’m not sure how to track the goal of submitted email address.
Can this be done?
By doug on May 15, 2009
Hi Doug,
Yes, you can track that process and create a goal when the process is complete. The key is you need to add some server level code that manipulates the GA code. Every time the server completes a step, it must manipulate the GA code before sending it back to the browser. Specifically, the new server side code must place a value in the _trackPageview() method. Place a different value in the parens for each “logical” step of the process. Here’s an example:
_trackPageview(’/step1′);
_trackPageview(’/step2′);
etc.
Thanks for the question!
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on May 18, 2009
Hi: I have a website with more than 4 goals that I need to track. I’m already creating funnels using _trackPageView() to assign unique goals, but I need more than 4.
If I set up a second profile for that domain, a new tracking code is generated…but I still want to track overall pageviews for the domain. Do I need to have both tracking codes on the pages with the additional goals, or is there a different way to configure GA?
By hostmaster on May 19, 2009
Hostmaster,
You can create a duplicate profile from an existing domain. In this scenario Google uses the current tracking code and then “copies” the raw data into the new profile. Note that Google does not copy the settings for the profile, you’ll need to configure the profile. It just copies the raw data.
Thanks for the question,
Justin
By Justin Cutroni on May 19, 2009