Last week I listed 3 ways to keep track of more than 4 goals in Google Analytics and discussed the first option:

1. Comparing content stats in Analytics
2. Setting up additional profiles for the same site
3. Pseudo ecommerce

This week I will be looking at the second option, which is (drum roll)….

Method 2: Setting up additional profiles for the same site

Although Google don’t tell us why they limit the tracking to only four goals, they do tell us that if we need more, we should configure another profile for the site and set up additional goals in that account.

How to set up a replica profile in Google Analytics:

Log in to your Google Analytics Account. Click “Add Website Profile” and choose “Add a Profile for an existing domain”. Then select the relevant domain from your dropdown menu, name your duplicate profile and click “Finish”.

You will now see your new profile listed on the Analytics settings page. Click on “check status” to be taken to the tracking code page. You don’t have to add any extra code as the replica profile will pick up the existing Google Analytics code on your site - so just click “finish”. Analytics will then wait for the data, which can take up to 24 hours.

You now have two identical profiles tracking the same URL. Now you can set up four new conversion goals in your new profile. If you need more than 8 goals, you will have to set up a third profile, and so on.

This method is a much better fix than the first one but I still find it very strange that you have to set up a whole extra profile (or several) to track all your goals within Google Analytics.
Anyone got any ideas why the limit on 4?