Odd Funnel Steps In Google Analytics Goals

May 27, 2010 | Jonathan Weber

I’ve written a post in the past about problems with data in Google Analytics funnel reports, but this is one I just remembered that isn’t covered there.

Have you ever seen a funnel like this one?

Goal Funnel with Unlabeled Step

What’s up with that second step, the one with no label?

The answer is that the funnel was changed during the time period we’re looking at. At some point, there was a step here, where there were 42 visits that went through that step. But the way the funnel is set up now, that step isn’t included any more.

You can make the weirdness go away by only looking at date ranges that are completely before or completely after you made the change.

So, if you’ve seen this, I hope this helps you figure out this head-scratcher.

When you make changes to your goals or funnels, you might also want to make an annotation of when that happened to keep track of the date and share it with the others who are looking at your analytics.