Good catch! You and Avinash is 100% correct in clarifying that it is not lost. In hindsight I could have been a little more clear in pointing out that when you change goal positions, like in the 3 images where I changed the Contact Us goal from spot 1 to 5 and then back again, this will not actually make you lose your data. It just makes it so that:

- Goal history data does not follow to the moved goal position.
- Goal history data remains connected with the original position.
- If you use the original position for another goal, it will retain the previous goal history and then start tracking new goal data from that point on.

I do caution that changing goals with history is a bad idea and unless you take steps to retain your data, such as Avinash’s excellent solution, you will be corrupting your goal history.

Great post, and I mentioned it in our weekly news roundup the other week, but thought it was important to make mention of the fact that your goal data is not actually lost.

Avinash calls attention to this in his blog comments (see link below), but from it sounds like GA has a lack of messaging issue here, not at problem with deleting goal history.

Again, great post, I just thought I’d make light of this one because it was just pointed out to me and it was something that had been previously unclear.

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2009/10/analytics-intelligent-insights.html#comment-489816

-Sam Niccolls