Among the recent changes to the goal setup process, arguably the most helpful is goal verification.
After you define a goal, you can now validate it against the last seven days of data in your profile. If the conversion rate is 0%, you may have configured your goal incorrectly, or the conversion would perhaps occur too infrequently to be useful as a performance indicator.
Goal verification may be particularly useful for previewing Regular Expression goals, since the margin of error is greater than for Exact Match or Head Match.
These previews are perhaps a glimpse into eventual goal retroactivity, which would be a very welcome change in Google Analytics. For now, however, as critical as goals are, they are not retroactive, so don’t wait to set them up.
