[UA] Analytics is not tracking goals [Legacy]

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This article explains the reasons that you may not see conversions in your reports.

In this article:

The goal URL is entered incorrectly

To determine if the goal URL is entered incorrectly, copy the URL in the Goal URL field and paste it in the search box of either the Pages report or the URL goals report.

When Analytics identifies a conversion via your configured goal, it ignores the domain name entirely. Therefore, you may remove the domain name entirely and still have a valid goal URL. For example, if your goal is http://www.mysite.com/1/thanks.html, you can safely use /1/thanks.html as your goal URL.

If you selected Regular Expression Match as the Match Type for your goal, you need to escape periods with a backslash (e.g., /1/thanks\.html). Learn more about regular expressions.

The goal page is not tagged with tracking code

If the goal page is not tagged with tracking code, Analytics does not track this page, and as a result does not track goals. You should also make sure that you've installed the correct tracking code on your pages since the code is specific to each account property. To find the tracking code, click Admin at the top of any Analytics page, then select the account and property. Under property, click Tracking Code. The status appears at the top of the page.

Incorrect match type

The match type (Head Match, Exact Match, Regular Expression Match) must be set to the correct type. Please note that only Regular Expression Match matches regular expressions in the goal URL and funnel step fields. The other match types do not accept regular expressions. If you are unsure what match type to select, use the default Head Match.

Incorrectly configured Exact Match

If you are using an exact match for a goal (e.g., http://domain.com/page.html), any trailing spaces invalidate the match. If you are using Regular Expressions Matching (e.g., ^/page.html), trailing spaces are not an issue.

Incorrectly configured regular expression

A simple way to verify your regular expression is to enter it the Search function in the Pages report. If the report contains matching goal entries, then your regular expression is correct. If there are no results, ensure that the page contains the tracking code.

Filters are rewriting the URLs

If you're using Analytics filters to rewrite your URLs, you need to make sure that your goal settings reflect these changes. Remember, filters that modify URLs are applied to the raw data coming into your account before the goals are processed. As a result, your goal and funnel URLs should reflect the final, rewritten format of the URL. For example:

If your site's URL, http://www.mysite.com/directory/download/file.html, is modified by a filter to look like /download/file, then your goal should match the final filtered URL of /download/file and not /directory/download/file.html.

Your goal page is a download (e.g., PDF)

Analytics does not track downloads as goals directly. You can, however, identify events as goals. For details, see Goals for downloads.

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