# Goals

Most of a dashboard tells you what happened. A goal tells you whether the thing you wanted to happen happened. It might be a thank-you page, a completed signup, or a download — anything you would rather count than skim. Once a site has at least one goal, Overview grows a **Goals** table showing each goal with its **Conversions** and **Rate**.

![Goals in Settings](docs/goals.png)

Add them under **Settings → Goals**. Give the goal a name you will recognise in a table months from now, then choose what it watches:

- **Path** matches by prefix, the same rule [segments](/docs/analytics/segments) use. A goal on `/thanks` therefore includes `/thanks/paid`.
- **Event** matches a named event such as `signup.complete`, which you fire from the page. Automatic outbound and download measurement uses `link.outbound` and `file.download`. See [events](/docs/analytics/events).

Ten goals per site is the limit, and it is a generous one — goals earn their keep by being few. Clicking a goal's name on Overview filters the dashboard to it.

## How the rate is worked out

The rate is converted visitors divided by visitors in the date range you are looking at, capped at 100%. It prefers distinct visitor hashes, and falls back to counting hits where those hashes are missing. Because the underlying visitor hash rotates daily, treat the rate as a good comparative signal across ranges rather than a precise measure of individual people.

You can hide the Goals table under **Settings → Appearance → Stats sections** without deleting anything — the goals stay defined and keep counting.