Setting up goals in GA4 - what has changed from Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics had Goals. GA4 has Key Events, which you mark as Conversions for reporting purposes. The distinction sounds semantic but it reflects a meaningful difference in how GA4 thinks about measurement. In UA, a Goal was a specific destination or event type. In GA4, almost anything can become a Key Event if the right event fires.

Setting up key events

In GA4, go to Admin > Events. Any event that GA4 is collecting - whether automatically tracked, recommended by Google, or custom - can be toggled as a Key Event (formerly called Conversion). This means that if your contact form fires a custom event on successful submission, you can mark that event as a Key Event in GA4 admin without any additional code changes.

Custom events for specific business goals

Standard GA4 events cover a lot of territory automatically - page views, sessions, scroll depth, file downloads, outbound clicks. But your specific business goals almost certainly require custom events. A click on your phone number. A specific page view that indicates interest. Engagement with a product configurator. A video play. These require custom implementation via GTM or direct code instrumentation, but once in place, they can all be marked as Key Events and tracked as conversions.

Conversion counting - once per session vs once per event

GA4 lets you control whether a conversion is counted once per session or every time the event fires. For a purchase, you want to count every purchase as a conversion. For a lead form submission, you may only want to count one per session even if the user submits multiple times. Choose the counting method in your conversion settings. The default changed with recent GA4 updates and it is worth checking that your conversions are counting as expected.

Importing GA4 conversions into Google Ads

You can import GA4 Key Events into Google Ads as conversion actions. This allows your smart bidding strategies in Google Ads to use GA4 goal data rather than separately implemented Google Ads conversion tags. The advantage is a single source of truth for conversion measurement. The disadvantage is that GA4's attribution model and conversion window may differ from your Google Ads settings. Check both before switching your primary conversion source.