How to Remove Goals from Google Analytics

Cleaning up an old Google Analytics account often means dealing with outdated or irrelevant goals. If you're looking at cluttered reports or inaccurate conversion data, it’s time to remove the goals that no longer serve your business. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to disable goals in both Universal Analytics (UA) and Google Analytics 4.

You Can’t Permanently Delete Goals

Before we go any further, it's essential to understand one fundamental rule in Google Analytics: you cannot permanently delete a goal or conversion and its historical data. Think of it as a safety feature. Google wants to maintain the integrity of your historical data, preventing an accidental click from wiping out years of valuable information.

Instead of deleting them, you “remove” goals by deactivating or disabling them. This simple action stops the goal from recording any new data moving forward, effectively removing it from your active tracking and cleaning up your reports. The old data associated with that goal will still exist in your account for historical analysis, but it won't impact your day-to-day reporting anymore.

Why Bother Cleaning Up Old Goals?

Leaving old, broken, or irrelevant goals active in your account isn't just messy, it can be actively harmful to your data analysis. Here are a few common reasons why regular clean-ups are necessary:

Cluttered Reports: Too many goals make your conversion reports difficult to read. It becomes hard to focus on the metrics that actually matter when they're buried among a dozen old or trivial ones.
Inaccurate Data: An outdated goal might still be firing incorrectly in the background, skewing your overall conversion rates and leading you to make decisions based on bad data.
Website Changes: You may have redesigned your website, removed an old newsletter signup form, or changed the user journey. The goals tied to those old features are now obsolete.
Hitting Account Limits: Universal Analytics had a hard limit of 20 goals per view. Deactivating unused goals frees up space for new, more relevant tracking. While GA4 is more flexible, good data hygiene is always a smart practice.
Setup Errors: Sometimes, a goal is just configured incorrectly from the start. "Deactivating" it is the first step before you replace it with one that tracks properly.

Keeping your goals aligned with your current business objectives ensures your data remains clean, accurate, and, most importantly, useful.

How to "Remove" Goals in Universal Analytics (UA)

While Universal Analytics was officially sunsetted by Google in 2023, countless businesses still have historical data in their UA properties. If you need to clean up an old account or simply want to understand how it was done, the process is straightforward.

To deactivate a goal in Universal Analytics, you simply turn its recording setting off. Follow these steps:

Log in to your Google Analytics account and navigate to the correct Universal Analytics property.
Click on Admin (the gear icon ) in the bottom-left corner.
In the far-right column, labeled ‘View,’ select the specific view that contains the goal you want to remove.
Under that ‘View’ column, click on Goals.
You’ll see a table listing all the goals created for that view. Find the one you want to stop tracking.
In that goal’s row, you'll see a toggle switch for Recording. Just click it to turn it from On to Off.

That’s it. The goal will immediately stop recording any new conversions. It won't appear in most of your standard reports from this point forward, decluttering your view of current performance.

Pro Tip for Organizing Inactive UA Goals

Even after you turn recording off, the goal remains in your list in the Admin section. Over time, this list can become confusing. A great trick for organization is to rename the inactive goal.

Click on the goal’s name to edit its settings. In the naming field, add a prefix like “[ARCHIVED]” or “ZZZ - Inactive” to its name (e.g., “[ARCHIVED] Old Contact Form Submission”). This change pushes the goal to the top or bottom of your alphabetical list, making it obvious to anyone on your team that the goal is no longer in use.

How to "Remove" Conversions in Google Analytics 4

Modern-day analytics now happens in Google Analytics 4, which has a different system for tracking key actions. What used to be called "Goals" are now called "Conversions." In GA4, almost everything a user does is considered an "event," from a page view to a purchase. You tell GA4 which events are important by marking them as conversions.

Therefore, "removing" a goal in GA4 means you simply "un-mark" an event as a conversion.

Here’s how to do it step-by-step:

Open your Google Analytics 4 property.
Click on Admin (the gear icon ) in the bottom-left menu.
In the ‘Property’ column (the middle one), under 'Data display,' click on Conversions.
This page displays your ‘Conversion Events’ table, showing all the events currently being counted as conversions.
Find the conversion you wish to deactivate in the list.
On the right side of its row, you will see a blue toggle switch under the "Mark as conversion" heading.
Click the toggle to switch it off. The switch will turn gray.

Once you flip that switch, GA4 will stop counting that event as a conversion in all your reports moving forward. The event itself will still be collected and visible in your ‘Events’ report, but it will no longer contribute to your conversion totals or be used in attribution models.

What if the Underlying Event Itself is a Mistake?

Sometimes the problem isn't just that an event shouldn't be a conversion, it's that the event shouldn't exist at all. Maybe it was a testing event, or it was configured incorrectly in Google Tag Manager.

Simply turning off the "Mark as conversion" toggle doesn't stop the event from being sent to GA4. If you want to stop the event from being collected entirely, you’ll need to do one of two things:

For events set up in GTM: Go into your Google Tag Manager container, find the tag that fires the event, and pause or delete it.
For hard-coded events (gtag.js): You'll need to ask a developer to find and remove the gtag('event', ...) code snippet from your website’s source code.

Removing the source tracking is the only way to stop an event from appearing in your analytics altogether.

Best Practices for Future-Proof Goal Management

Whether you're using UA for historical analysis or GA4 for your daily reporting, a little bit of organization goes a long way. Adopting these habits will save you (and your future team members) a lot of headaches.

1. Use Clear Naming Conventions

Avoid generic names like "Goal 1" or "tracking_event." Be descriptive so anyone can understand what's being measured at a glance. For example:

contact_form_success
newsletter_signup_footer
added_to_cart_pdp
viewed_demo_video

Using a consistent format helps keep everything organized as you add more conversion events over time.

2. Keep Simple Documentation

You don't need a complex system. A simple Google Sheet with three columns can be a lifesaver: Goal/Conversion Name, Purpose, and Date Created/Archived. This document provides critical context about why a particular conversion was set up, making it easy to decide if it's still relevant during future audits.

3. Schedule Regular Audits

Your business isn't static, and your analytics shouldn't be either. Set a calendar reminder every six months to review all your conversions. Ask yourself:

Is this action still important to our business goals?
Does the corresponding feature (e.g., button, page, form) still exist on our site?
Is the data being collected accurately?

Take 30 minutes to run through your list and deactivate any conversions that are no longer relevant. This is one of the easiest ways to ensure your data stays clean and trustworthy.

Final Thoughts

Managing goals and conversions is a crucial part of maintaining a healthy Google Analytics account. By regularly deactivating outdated tracking, you ensure your reports stay clean, relevant, and accurate, allowing you to confidently make data-driven decisions. Whether in Universal Analytics or GA4, the key is to be proactive in your data hygiene.

Of course, managing tracking in platforms like Google Analytics is just one part of the battle. If you're tired of spending hours jumping between different platforms, downloading CSVs, and manually building reports, we can help. In Graphed , you simply connect your data sources - like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Shopify - once. Then, you can use plain English to build real-time dashboards and get instant answers, saving you from the manual work of reporting.