You can't record the same goal twice in the same session

This is a sticky situation, and one that you might never run into... but when you do, chances are you'll either remember what you read here, or have happened across this page because you were lucky enough to Google the right answer.

Honestly.

A friend called me up a while back and said "I've got an odd problem, and only you can help." He launched into describing how he had goals recording for his website based on an event being sent. Ok, that's all well and good. The problem he found was that his count of that event didn't match up with his count of the goal completions.... the events were significantly more than the goal completion numbers.

The problem is simple, and is a little-known behavior within Google Analytics. Namely this:

Google Analytics will only record a specific goal completion once within a session.

For example, let's say you have a goal set up for a purchase within your website. A person comes to your website, makes a purchase (goal recorded), and then a few minutes later within the same session makes another purchase (no goal recorded). They then go and sign up for your newsletter (goal recorded).

You can have multiple goals being accomplished and recorded, but any goal can only be recorded once in a single session.