"I opened GA4 and 'Conversions' had disappeared — there's something called 'Key Events' instead."
Since the 2024 GA4 terminology rename, this question keeps coming up. What looks like a simple rename actually reorganized GA4's relationship with Google Ads, and quietly carried over your old settings.
This article walks through what the rename really changed, what stayed the same, how it interacts with Google Ads, and how to connect these basics to revenue decisions.
TL;DR
- In 2024, GA4 "Conversions" was renamed to "Key Events" — separating it from Google Ads "Conversions" at the wording level. GA4 calls the important user actions "Key Events"; Google Ads keeps using "Conversions" for ad-attributed outcomes
- Old conversion settings auto-migrated to Key Events — only labels and a few report names changed; measurement logic and historical data carried over
- Key event count is a "likelihood signal" — it cannot drive investment decisions alone. To make budget calls you need to break it down: which channel, how much revenue per session (RPS)
1. Why the wording changed — UA→GA4 cleanup and the 2024 rename
"Key Events" did not appear out of nowhere. It is the result of Google cleaning up a long-standing problem: the same word meant different things in different places.
In legacy GA (Universal Analytics), important actions were called "Goals." When GA4 rollout began in 2020, Google retired "Goal" and unified everything under "Conversions." But this created a new problem — GA4's "Conversions" and Google Ads's "Conversions" referred to different numbers under the same name. GA4 counted on-site events while Google Ads counted ad-attributed outcomes. When the two were placed side by side, the "the numbers don't match" support tickets piled up fast.
To untangle this, Google renamed GA4's "Conversions" to "Key Events" in March 2024, leaving "Conversions" exclusively for Google Ads. GA4 from 2024 onward sits on a two-layer structure — inside GA4, the important user actions are "Key Events." When linked to Google Ads, those same fires get imported as "Ads Conversions." Same purchase event, two labels.
2. What actually changed, and what did not — using the new wording in practice
When people hear "rename," they brace for a full reconfiguration. In practice, only the labels and report names changed — the measurement logic and historical data are intact.
Three places in the GA4 UI had "Conversion" replaced with "Key Event":
- Admin > Events > Mark as key event (was "Mark as conversion")
- Reports > Engagement > Key events (was the "Conversions" report)
- Explorations: metric picker now shows "Key events" (was "Conversions")
Event names themselves (purchase, sign_up, etc.) and Google Ads link settings did not change. The clean mental model: "Labels changed, measurement logic stayed."
For accounts that had GA4 conversions configured before March 2024, the old conversion events were automatically carried over as Key Events. No reconfiguration is required, but a 3-point sanity check is worth doing: (1) Admin > Key events shows all your previous conversion events with matching counts, (2) historical reports continue across the rename window without a gap, (3) Google Ads side "Conversions" are still configured independently. The third one trips people up the most. Marking an event as a Key Event in GA4 alone does not feed Google Ads automated bidding — for ad operations, you still need to set up "Conversions" on the Google Ads side as a separate step.
3. Key event count alone cannot drive investment decisions — the revenue lens
From an ad-investment decision standpoint, key event counts alone don't answer the question of "where should the next dollar go" — there's a structural ceiling.
A Key Event in GA4 is a signal that a user moved closer to purchase or sign-up. add_to_cart, begin_checkout, purchase — any of them can be marked as a Key Event. "1,200 key events fired this month" tells you how many high-intent actions happened, but it does not tell you which ad channel drove them, or how much revenue they translated to.
In real ad operations the recurring questions are:
- How many key events did Meta vs Google ads each generate?
- Of those, how many were tied to sessions that produced revenue?
- When you normalize by revenue-per-session (RPS), which channel is most efficient?
Key event count answers the first question, but not the other two.
Budget calls require pulling sessions in front of key events and revenue behind them into one view. The base equation is Revenue = Sessions × CVR (conversion rate) × AOV (average order value) (RPS = Revenue ÷ Sessions = CVR × AOV). ROAS or CVR alone hides cases where you're hitting volume but losing on order value. Comparing revenue-per-session across channels is what reveals which channel's session is actually monetizing best.
Key event count tells you "how many fires." The "where should the next dollar go" answer lives in revenue-per-session. Use GA4 Key Events as the starting line, but make the budget call on channel-level RPS — that's the move that turns analytics basics into investment decisions.
FAQ
Q1. "Mark as conversion" is gone from the GA4 UI — has the setup workflow changed?
Only the label changed to "Mark as key event." The workflow is the same: Admin > Events, toggle on "Mark as key event" for the relevant event row.
Q2. Did my UA Goals migrate to Key Events automatically?
No. Universal Analytics Goals require manual reconfiguration when migrating to GA4. The 2024 rename only auto-migrated "GA4 Conversions → Key Events." UA→GA4 is a separate exercise.
Originally posted on RevenueScope (with the full reference list).
Top comments (0)