What are Google Analytics Smart Goals And How To Implement Them

Partha Sarathi Bhowal
4 min readOct 6, 2018

If you are not using Adwords conversion techniques or importing goals from Google analytics into Adwords account, the new feature of Google, that is Smart Goals can excite you to do so automatically.

Smart Goals are created by Google Analytics and are designed to help business that don’t have the capabilities to measure conversions and optimize campaigns. There are billions of advertisers who don’t have such facilities. SEO experts have many subdivisions like the any other service providers who help to to use such goals in an optimum way.

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The use of the goals improve your adwords bidding.

How to implement Smart Goals?

First of all you should have your Google adwords account and then link it to Google analytics in order to enable this feature. In Analytics, select the Smart Goals option under Admin tab.

Also remember used adwords account must have 500 clicks to the selected Analytics over the past 30 days to set up your Smart Goals feature.

Smart Goals are recommended to be used when you aren’t’ using conversions and the best way to measure sessions into conversions.Smart Goals are configured at the view level and it is the result of machine learning features of google.

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There are certain algorithms which will measure the signals that can be identifies as conversion and that’s how the Smart Goals feature of Google works. To estimate the best sessions, Smart Goals feature of Google uses the 5% of the most visited traffics to your Adwords to determine the conversion rate based upon the active sessions.

Steps for setting Smart Goals

  • Sign into Google adwords account
  • Click on ADMIN tab and navigate to the view section
  • In the VIEW section, click on Goals
  • Create a New Goal
  • Click on the Smart Goal and give your Smart Goal a name.

Steps to follow while importing Google Adwords account to Smart Goals

  • After activating Smart Goals in your analytics, sign in your google adwords account
  • Click on Analytics on the left hand side of the menu
  • Check the boxes next to the goals you want to import and click on the tab continue
  • In the next page, you will see settings that are applicable for your goals
  • Make your choices and then click on the Import tab
  • Click close or import more goals
  • Adwords will start importing data from your analytics

Report generated from the Smart Goals

You will get the same from the Smart Goals option. This report will help you to see how your Smart Goals differ from other traffics. You can also include the same in your custom reports. Also with the help of this feature the advertisers can set target cost per acquisition.

In this way, the advertisers can optimize adwords and use the the budget in the affective manner to pan further course of action. Smart Goals completed dimensions are viewed in View section.

Limitations of Smart Goals

  • Smart Goals are not configurable or customizable
  • There is only one smart goal per view
  • It will take 1 to 20 available goal slots
  • Cannot be used for mobile apps
  • Smart goals are not applicable for posts which receive one million hits per day
  • Smart Goals does not support view through conversions

Smart Goals will not be a good idea for :

  • Advertisements without any solid purpose
  • Advertisements which use anonymous data

Thus smart goals are nowadays used in google analytics which don’t have enough techniques for conversion of goals from the same. Its very much essential to understand the concept of Google Smart goals before implementing it. Also the steps are to be followed carefully to optimize search marketing procedures though Smart Goals. Also do remember that Smart Goals cannot be applied for configurable and customizable data where there are 1 to 20 goal slots. Moreover they cannot be used for mobile apps anbd one million hist fopr apaprticiuale post in a day. It does not support view through conversion. It advisable to take the help of SEO experts like various service providers and many such in implementing the same.

Apart from this, it is also recommended to study the report of the Smart Goals whether the same can be used further for your products or services. And one must be very careful that Smart Goals are not recommended for all types of advertisements like some advertisement do use some anonymous data where Smart Goals have no relevance. The prerequisites of Smart Goals cannot be avoided where your adwords account has to be linked with your analytics and there should be 500 clicks to make the feature applicable.

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