Define and test a goal

Checked against the product’s code on 7 November 2026.

Open Insights > Goals. A goal describes a result you want to count, such as completed signups when your site records the matching event. It can be used in reporting, experiments and personalization measurement.

Choose a kind

1. Choose New goal.
2. Enter the goal’s key.
3. Enter its name.
4. Choose a kind from the table below.

The key is the goal’s permanent identifier and cannot be changed after the goal is saved; your site code uses it when it directly reports that goal.

Kind	What it counts
Event match	Recorded events that match the selected type and rule.
Page reach	Visits reaching an exact path or a chosen path prefix.
Explicit goal post	Goal events sent by your code with this goal’s key.

For Event match, choose the event type the site sends.

For Page reach:

1. Enter path pattern.
2. Choose prefix or exact.

For Explicit goal post, arrange the sender with your developer. The key alone does not make site code send it.

Preview and approve

Read Live backtest preview for the rule and historical window being evaluated. It reports how many stored events and visitors would have matched. It does not create those events, rewrite history or predict future conversions.

1. Choose the value rule: no value, a fixed value or a value from an event property, a detail supplied with that event.
2. For a fixed value, enter amount.
3. For a fixed value, enter currency.
4. For an event property, enter the name of the numeric detail in the field below that choice.

A value rule cannot recover a value that the event never supplied.

Changing an existing goal’s rule or value raises its version and restates its past results, including experiment results, the next time they are recalculated. A rename alone keeps the version and restates nothing. Read the rule before using it to interpret an experiment or report.

1. Choose Preview change.
2. Read the change on Save this goal?.
3. Choose Approve & apply if it is the intended definition.
4. Read the result.

Nothing is saved until you approve.

Check the first real result

Use a test site and a browser that has accepted analytics and does not send Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track.

1. Trigger the intended action.
2. Check its recorded event in Events & Capture.
3. Check its goal result.

The browser helper sends no goal events after analytics is declined. A saved goal without a sender cannot produce a conversion. Consent, retained data and the properties actually captured determine what can be matched.

Use Events & Capture to inspect the incoming vocabulary. Use Measures and retention cohorts for metrics built from goals.

Retire a goal

Editors and Admins can archive a goal that should stop counting future conversions. Check the reports and experiments that use it before choosing this.

Use the Goals screen

1. Find the active goal on Goals.
2. Choose its Archive button.
3. Choose Really archive?.
4. Read Archive this goal? and its proposed change.
5. Choose Approve & apply if it is intended.
6. Read the receipt and its available Undo.

The screen asks you to confirm even though the copilot request below does not need an approval card.

Ask the copilot

1. Ask the copilot: “Archive the goal [goal name].”
2. Read the receipt naming that goal. This request needs no approval card.
3. Check that the goal is archived rather than available for a new binding.

Its history and past results stay as computed; archiving does not erase recorded events. Use the receipt’s Undo to restore the definition. See Goal requests.