How to Set Up Goals in Google Analytics

Why can't I find Goals in Google Analytics anymore?

Because Goals belonged to Universal Analytics, and Universal Analytics is gone. Standard UA properties stopped processing new data on 1 July 2023, and Google began deleting UA properties and their historical data from July 2024.

Google Analytics 4 is a different measurement model, not a redesign of the old one. Universal Analytics organised data into sessions and pageviews, with goals defined on top. GA4 treats everything as an event — a pageview is an event, a click is an event, a form submission is an event.

Because everything is already an event, GA4 doesn't need a separate 'goal' concept. It just needs you to say which events matter.

What replaced Goals in GA4?

Key events. You mark an event as a key event and GA4 reports on it the way UA reported on goal completions.

One naming wrinkle causes real confusion. When GA4 launched, important events were called conversions. In 2024 Google renamed them to key events, and reserved the word 'conversion' for Google Ads. So:

If you're reading a tutorial that says 'mark as conversion' in GA4, it was written before the rename. The button now says 'Mark as key event' and does the same thing.

How do you set up a key event in GA4?

If the event already exists, it's two clicks. If it doesn't, you create it first from an existing event plus a condition.

If the event already fires:

• Admin (bottom left)
• Data display → Events
• Find your event in the list
• Toggle Mark as key event

That's it. GA4 begins counting it as a key event from that moment — it does not apply retroactively.

If the event doesn't exist yet — the thank-you page case: this is the direct replacement for a UA Destination goal, and it's the most common setup.

1. Admin → Data display → Events. 2. Click Create event → Create. 3. Name it something clear, e.g. generate_lead. 4. Set matching conditions: event_name equals page_view and page_location contains /thank-you. 5. Save. 6. Trigger it yourself once, then return to Events and toggle Mark as key event. The event has to fire at least once before it appears in the list to be marked. Visit your own thank-you page to make it show up.

How do you check a key event is actually working?

Use DebugView, which shows events arriving in real time from a device you've flagged for debugging.

Admin → DebugView. To get your own device to appear, either install the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome extension or use Google Tag Manager's Preview mode.

Then walk through the action yourself — submit the form, reach the thank-you page — and watch the event appear. If it doesn't, the condition is wrong, and the usual culprits are:

• page_location contains a full URL when you only need the path. Match on /thank-you, not the whole address.
• Case sensitivity. /Thank-You and /thank-you are different matches.
• The thank-you 'page' isn't a page. Many modern forms show a confirmation without navigating, so no page_view fires. You need a form_submit event or a Tag Manager trigger instead.

That third one catches people constantly, especially on single-page sites and embedded form tools.

What about the old UA goal types that don't exist in GA4?

Universal Analytics had four goal types. Two carry over cleanly, two don't.

For the two that don't carry over, GA4's built-in user_engagement metrics and the engaged sessions definition — a session lasting over 10 seconds, or with a key event, or with 2+ pageviews — cover most of what those goals were actually being used for.

If you genuinely need a duration threshold, you can build it with a Google Tag Manager timer trigger firing a custom event. In practice, most firms using duration goals were using them as a rough engagement proxy, and GA4's engagement metrics do that job better. The same principle applies to SEO tracking tools: the metric only matters if it maps to a business outcome.

How do you send GA4 key events to Google Ads?

Link the two properties, then import the key event as a conversion action in Google Ads. Marking something as a key event in GA4 does not automatically make it available for Ads bidding.

1. In GA4: Admin → Product links → Google Ads links → link your account. 2. In Google Ads: Goals → Conversions → Summary → New conversion action. 3. Choose Import → Google Analytics 4 properties. 4. Select your key event and import it. 5. Decide whether it counts as a Primary action (used for bidding) or Secondary (observation only).

That last step matters more than it looks. Every primary conversion action feeds Smart Bidding. Importing several overlapping key events as primary teaches the algorithm to optimise toward inflated numbers — one of the most common causes of wasted Google Ads spend.

This is the same discipline we apply when measuring SEO results for clients: the channel is only as good as the quality of the events you feed it.

How many key events can you have?

Thirty per property on standard GA4. That's a real limit and it's lower than most people expect.

Which is a useful constraint, because the discipline it forces is correct: mark only the actions that genuinely represent business value. A form submission, a phone click, a purchase, a booking. Not scroll depth, not video plays, not newsletter views.

If you're near the limit, you're almost certainly marking things that should just be ordinary events you look at in reports. For a deeper audit of what should actually be tracked, see our professional SEO services — measurement architecture is usually the first thing we fix before touching rankings or bids.

Frequently asked questions