How to Set Goals in Google Analytics 4

Setting up goals in Google Analytics 4 is a critical first step to understanding if your marketing is actually working, but the process has changed completely from what you might be used to. This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up, track, and analyze "Conversions" - what GA4 now calls goals - so you can get clear insights into your website's performance.

"Goals" Are Now "Conversions" in GA4: What Changed?

First, let's address the big change. In Universal Analytics (the older version of Google Analytics), you configured "Goals" to track important actions like a form submission or a visit to a specific page. In GA4, these are called "Conversions," and they are all based on events.

An event is any interaction a user has with your site - a click, a scroll, a video play, a page view, a file download, you name it. A conversion is simply any event that you tell Google Analytics is especially important to your business. This shift is powerful because it gives you far more flexibility than the old system.

Think about the types of actions you want users to take:

• Submitting a contact or lead form

• Signing up for a newsletter

• Making a purchase

• Downloading a PDF guide

• Clicking a "Request a Demo" button

• Spending more than 5 minutes on your site

In GA4, you can track every single one of these as a distinct conversion event, giving you a detailed picture of what's driving your business forward.

The Two Ways to Configure Conversions in GA4

You have two primary methods for setting up conversions in GA4. The path you choose depends on whether Google Analytics is already tracking the event you care about.

1. Mark an already existing event as a conversion. This is the simplest method and works for many common goals. GA4 automatically collects certain events, and you simply need to flip a switch to tell it that one is a conversion.

2. Create a new custom event and then mark it as a conversion. This method is for more specific actions that GA4 doesn’t track by default, like a user visiting a specific "thank you" page or clicking a high-value button.

We'll walk through both methods with clear, actionable steps.

Method 1: The Easy Way - Marking an Existing Event as a Conversion

GA4 features "enhanced measurement," which automatically tracks several helpful events without any extra setup. These include page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, site searches, and file downloads. You can often use these pre-existing events for your conversions.

For example, if your contact form has a button that leads to a file download (like a PDF confirmation), you can treat the file_download event as your conversion.

Here’s how you set it up:

1. Navigate to your Events report. Log in to your GA4 property, then go to the bottom-left corner and click on the Admin gear icon.

2. In the Property column, click on Events under the "Data display" section.

3. Identify your desired event. You will see a list of all existing events that GA4 has tracked on your site. Look for the one you want to designate as a conversion, like generate_lead or form_submit. In this example, we’ll use file_download, which is automatically tracked when a user clicks a link that leads to a common file type (.pdf, .docx, etc.). Find that event in the list.

4. Flip the switch. On the far right side of the table, you'll see a column titled "Mark as conversion" with toggles for each event. Simply click the toggle next to the event you want to track as a goal. It will turn blue when enabled.

And that’s it! GA4 will now count every instance of the file_download event as a conversion. This data will start appearing in your conversion reports within 24-48 hours.

Method 2: Creating a Custom Event, Then Marking It a Conversion

Sometimes, an automatically collected event is too broad. You don't want to track every page view as a conversion, only when a user lands on a specific "thank you" page after submitting a form.

For this, you need to first create a custom event based on specific conditions and then enable it as a conversion.

Step 1: Create a Custom Event

Let's stick with our "thank you" page example. We want to fire a conversion event every time someone visits a URL that contains /thank-you-for-your-submission. Here's how to build it inside the GA4 interface.

1. Navigate to the "Create event" screen. Go back to Admin > Events and click the "Create event" button.

2. You’ll now see a list of any custom events you’ve already created. Click "Create" to build a new one.

3. Configure your event rules. This is the most crucial part. You're basically creating a set of rules that tells GA4, "When you see an incoming event that matches these conditions, create a new event with this name."

   For our "Thank You" Page conversion, use these settings:

   • Custom event name: Give it a descriptive, clear name using underscores instead of spaces, like contact_form_success.

   • Matching Conditions: This is where you set the rules.

     • In the first row, set: event_name | equals | page_view

     (This tells GA4 to only look at page view events.)

     • Click "Add condition" for the second row, and set: page_location | contains | /thank-you

     (This refines the rule to only look at page views where the URL includes /thank-you.)

   Pro Tip: Use contains instead of equals for the URL. Thank you pages often have extra characters added to the URL (like ?submission_id=12345), and contains ensures your goal tracks correctly regardless of these additions.

4. Save the new event. Click "Create" in the top-right corner.

Step 2: Mark Your New Custom Event a Conversion

Here’s something that confuses many GA4 users: your new custom event will not appear immediately in your list of events. It may take anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours to show up, and it only appears after a user has actually completed that action for the first time.

So, the best practice is to go to your website and trigger the event yourself - in this case, by visiting your "thank you" page. Then, be patient.

Once your new event (contact_form_success) appears in your Admin > Events table, simply follow the steps from Method 1: find it in the list and flip the "Mark as conversion" toggle to on.

How to Test and Verify Your Conversions

You should never just trust that your tracking is working. GA4's built-in "DebugView" is the best way to test your conversions in real-time to make sure they're firing correctly before you wait a full day for the data to populate your reports.

1. Open DebugView. In your GA4 property, go to Admin > DebugView (under "Data display"). This page will be empty until it starts receiving debug events.

2. Enable debugging on your site. The easiest way to do this is with the official Google Tag Assistant Companion Chrome extension. Install it, navigate to your website, click the extension icon, and hit "Enable". Then, refresh your website page.

3. Trigger the conversion action. Stay on your site and complete the goal you set up. Submit your test form, click the important button, or visit the thank-you page.

4. Watch for the event in DebugView. Go back to the DebugView window in GA4. You should see a timeline of events populating as you interact with your site. Find your event - in our example, look for contact_form_success.

5. Confirm it's a conversion. The best part? Events you have marked as conversions will appear with a green flag icon next to them. If you see the event name with a green flag, your conversion tracking is working perfectly.

Where to Find Your Conversion Data in GA4

Once you’ve set up your conversions and verified they're working, where do you find the data? Google Analytics 4 includes conversion metrics across several key reports:

• Reports > Engagement > Conversions: This is the main summary report that shows you a simple table of all your conversion events and the total count for each.

• Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition: This is arguably the most valuable report. It shows you where your traffic is coming from (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Social, Direct) and includes a "Conversions" column so you can see which channels are driving the most valuable actions.

• Explore tab: For more advanced analysis, you can use the Explorations section to build custom reports that segment your conversion data by device, country, landing page, and nearly any other dimension available in GA4.

Final Thoughts

Setting up conversions in GA4 boils down to identifying the user actions most important to your business and telling Google Analytics to track them. By using either pre-existing events or creating your own custom ones, you can get the visibility you need to measure what matters, optimize your marketing efforts, and ultimately grow your business.

Tracking conversions inside GA4 is a great starting point, but the real insights come when you can tie that data to information from your other platforms. At Graphed, we make this simple by allowing you to connect sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads, and Salesforce in seconds. You can then ask questions in plain English like, "show me a dashboard of my ad spend vs. revenue driven from Google Ads conversions this quarter," and our AI data analyst builds an interactive, real-time dashboard for you instantly, without you having to touch a single CSV file or reporting tool.