Troubleshooting your Google Analytics goals

Updated on 2024-02-09

Here are a few common issues that can occur with Google Analytics goals.

Are you tracking pageviews rather than completed actions?


A typical scenario of that would be a registration goal. This is where a user submits a form on one page and then continues on to the thank-you page. Is this being tracked correctly, aka are you tracking the form page instead of the thank-you page?

If there is no thank-you page after completing the form...

You will have to create a custom event to track the completion of the form.

Are you selecting the wrong match type?

If you select exact match URL that will only match that phrase not with any parameters on the end of it. You can use head match, which will match the start of the URL. Regular expression will give you more flexibility when you're searching for a particular string within the URL.

Another issue could be inconsistent naming

If you set up an event goal to match the word email, that is only going to match that. It will not recognize e-mail or any other variations.

If you're doing your matching correctly, it could be a problem with the filters in your Google Analytics view rewriting URLs

This means that the URL you see in the browser might not be the URL you see in the Google Analytics setup. To check this go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages report and see if you can locate the page there.

The most complicated issue is cross-domain tracking

This occurs if one user completes an action on one domain and then continues to another domain, suhc as a separate domain for checkout or subscriptions. This can result in the user being lost between the two domains. This is easily fixed with cross-domain tracking.

tip:

Check your goals in Real Time using the Overview report. This would allow you to see how the site is converting into a goal and if the site is converting into a goal when you click on the site.