How to Edit Key Events in Google Analytics 4

Setting up your Key Events in Google Analytics 4 feels like a win, but what happens when you need to make a change? Maybe you marked the wrong event, your naming convention needs an update, or you want to track something more specific. This guide will walk you through exactly how to edit Key Events in GA4, from simple fixes to more advanced modifications.

First Things First: What Are "Key Events" in GA4?

If you've been using Google Analytics for a while, you might be scratching your head at the term "Key Events." Didn't these used to be called "Conversions"? Yes, they did.

In early 2024, Google decided to rename Conversions to Key Events. The functionality is exactly the same, it's just a new name. A Key Event is any user action that is valuable to your business - a sale, a form submission, a newsletter signup, you name it. They are the metrics you use to measure the success of your marketing efforts.

So, whenever you see "Key Events" in your GA4 property, just think "Conversions." They are the specific events you've told Google are most important for you to track and report on.

Why Would You Need to Edit a Key Event?

It's easy to assume that once a Key Event is set up, it’s set in stone. But there are plenty of common scenarios where you'll need to make adjustments:

You Made a Mistake: It happens to everyone. You might have accidentally toggled the "Mark as key event" switch for a generic event like page_view or session_start, and now your reports are showing thousands of unintended conversions.
Your Tracking Needs Have Changed: Maybe an old goal is no longer relevant to your business strategy. For example, a campaign-specific "thank you" page download is over, and you want to clean up your reports by removing it.
Cleaning Up Your Data: You might have inconsistent event names like form_submit, lead_form, and contact_submission all tracking the same action. You'll want to consolidate these into a single, clean Key Event to avoid confusion.
Refining Your Tracking: A simple page_view of a "thank you" page is good, but what if you want to create a more specific event that only fires when that page view comes from a specific traffic source? You can create a new, more refined Key Event based on the parameters of an existing one.

Whatever your reason, managing your Key Events is an essential part of maintaining a healthy and useful Google Analytics account.

Before You Start: Important Things to Know

Before you jump into the GA4 interface, keep these three points in mind:

1. You Need the Right Permissions: To create, edit, or modify events and Key Events, you need to have an Administrator or Editor role for the GA4 property. If you have "Viewer" status, you won't be able to make any of these changes.
2. Changes Are Not Retroactive: This is a big one. Any modification you make to an event or Key Event in GA4 will only apply to data collected after the change is made. It will not change your historical data. So, if you "unmark" an event as a Key Event today, all the conversions it recorded up until yesterday will still be in your reports.
3. There Are Two Ways to "Edit": The term "editing" a Key Event can mean two different things in GA4. Understanding the difference is where most people get stuck.
- Marking/Unmarking an Event: This is simply telling GA4 to start or stop counting an existing event as a Key Event in your reports. You're not changing the event itself, just its status.
- Modifying/Creating an Event: This is where you actually change the event's name or parameters before GA4 processes it. This is how you fix typos, consolidate messy events, or create a brand new Key Event from a more generic one.

We'll cover both methods in detail below.

Method 1: Unmarking an Event as a Key Event

This is the simplest way to "edit" your Key Events. You're just telling Google, "Hey, stop including this event in my conversion reports from now on." It's perfect for when you've accidentally marked the wrong event or an old conversion goal is no longer relevant.

Step-by-Step Guide to Unmarking a Key Event:

Navigate to the Admin section of your GA4 property by clicking the gear icon in the bottom-left corner.
Under the Data display column, click on Key Events.
You'll see a table listing all the events that are currently marked as Key Events.
Find the event you want to remove from your reporting.
On the far right of that row, you'll see a blue toggle switch. Click this toggle to turn it off.

And that’s it! The toggle will turn grey, and Google Analytics will stop counting that event as a Key Event from that point forward. It will remain in your table with the toggle off in case you ever want to turn it back on. Remember, your past data won't be affected, you'll simply see the number of conversions for that event flatline in your reports from the day you turned it off.

Method 2: Modifying an Existing Event or Creating a New One

What if simply turning off a Key Event isn't enough? What if you need to rename an event, change its parameters, or create a more specific conversion from a general user action? This is where GA4's "Modify Event" and "Create Event" features come in.

You can find both of these powerful tools in the same place:

Go to Admin.
Under the Data collection and modification column, click on Events.

On this page, you’ll see a list of all your existing events, not just the ones marked as Key Events. In the top right corner, you'll see two blue buttons: "Modify event" and "Create event." Let’s break down how to use each.

When to Use "Modify Event"

You should use "Modify event" when you want to permanently change an event as it is being collected. This is ideal for correcting mistakes, standardizing naming conventions, or adding parameters that might be missing.

Example Scenario: Your developers have implemented form submissions with typos like form_submision and contact_form_submistion. You want to clean these up and consolidate them into a single, correct event called form_submit.

How to Modify an Event:

On the Events page, click the Modify event button.
Click Create to start a new modification rule.
Give your modification a name, like "Standardize Form Submit Names."
Under Matching conditions, you'll define which events you want to change. For our example, you could set up conditions like:
- Condition 1: event_name equals form_submision
- Condition 2: event_name equals contact_form_submistion
Under Modify parameters, you tell GA4 what to change. In this case, you would configure it to:
- Change event_name to the new value: form_submit.
Click Create in the top right.

From this point forward, every time GA4 receives an event called form_submision or contact_form_submistion, it will automatically change its name to form_submit before it's saved in your reports. Later, you can go into your Key Events list and mark form_submit to ensure clean reporting.

When to Use "Create Event"

You should use "Create event" when you want to create a brand new event based on the conditions of another, more generic event. It leaves the original event untouched and simply fires an additional, more meaningful event at the same time.

This is extremely powerful for creating Key Events without having to touch any code on your website.

Example Scenario: You have a "Request a Demo" form. When a user submits it, they are redirected to a /thank-you page. You want to create a Key Event called demo_request whenever a user lands on this specific page.

How to Create an Event:

On the Events page, click the Create event button.
In the Custom events list, click Create.
Give your new custom event a name. We’ll call it demo_request. Use underscores instead of spaces and keep it lowercase to stay consistent with GA4's naming standards.
Under Matching conditions, you define what needs to happen for your new event to fire. We want it to fire with a specific page view, so we’ll use two conditions:
- Condition 1: event_name equals page_view
- Condition 2: page_location (a parameter of the page_view event) contains /thank-you
Leave unchecked the section labeled Copy parameters from the source event unless you want to pull over any additional specific information from underlying page_view event for further analysis.
Click Create in the top-right corner.

Now, every time a user triggers a page_view event on a URL that has "/thank-you" in it, GA4 will also create and log a brand new demo_request event. All you have to do is go to your Admin > Key Events list, click "New key event," and tell GA4 to mark demo_request moving forward!

Final Thoughts

Managing your tracking in GA4 doesn't have to be complicated. By understanding the difference between unmarking a Key Event and using the "Modify" or "Create Event" functions, you can keep your data clean, accurate, and aligned with your business goals. These tools give you the flexibility to correct mistakes and refine your tracking without relying on a developer for every change.

Once your tracking is dialed in, the next step is analysis. We built Graphed to take the manual work out of reporting by letting you connect all of your tools — including Google Analytics — and build dashboards with simple, natural language. Instead of spending hours in the GA4 interface trying to build reports, you can just ask questions like "Show me a comparison of key events by traffic source this month," and get a live, sharable dashboard in seconds. It allows you to skip straight to the insights.