How to Track Goal Conversions in Google Analytics

Short answer

In GA4, you mark any event as a "key event" (formerly called conversion). The most important ones for small businesses: phone number clicks, form submissions, and purchases. Once marked, GA4 tracks how often they happen and which traffic sources drive them.

Why conversion tracking changes everything

Without conversions set up, GA4 just shows you traffic. With conversions, it shows you which traffic actually matters.

Example: Your Instagram account sends 500 visitors a month. Google sends 200. But if the 200 Google visitors generate 20 contact form submissions and the 500 Instagram visitors generate 2, you know where to invest your time.

Step 1: Decide what to track

Pick the 2–3 actions that matter most for your business:

Service business: phone number click, contact form submission, booking request
eCommerce: purchase, add to cart, begin checkout
Content site: email sign-up, resource download, page view (specific page)

Step 2: Verify the events exist in GA4

GA4 automatically tracks some events out of the box — including click for outbound links, form_submit, scroll, and purchase (if you have an eCommerce site).

In GA4 → Reports → Engagement → Events, look for your event in the list. If it's not there, you may need to configure it via Google Tag Manager or custom code.

Step 3: Mark events as key events

In GA4, go to Admin → Events
Find the event you want to track as a conversion
Toggle "Mark as key event" on

GA4 will now track this in the Conversions report and Attribution reports.

Step 4: Track phone number clicks

Phone clicks are the most important conversion for many service businesses, but GA4 doesn't track them automatically.

The easiest fix: in Google Tag Manager, create a trigger for clicks on elements with tel: in the URL, then create a GA4 event tag tied to it. Alternatively, use a call tracking service like CallRail (callrail.com) which assigns unique phone numbers and reports back to GA4 automatically.

Reading your conversion data

Go to Advertising → Attribution → Conversion paths. This shows you the sequence of touchpoints before someone converted — e.g., they found you via Google, visited twice, then called on the third visit. This tells you the full picture of what your marketing is doing.