I’ve been playing around with Google Analytics’ goals recently and I don’t quite get how they work. They sound easy enough, but yet, they are very confusing.

For example, when you add your goal, it says e.g. http://www.mysite.com/thankyou.html. But on the ‘My site’s pages are dynamically generated. How do I set up funnels and goals?’ page it shows www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1 (no http://) and on the expressions page it shows www\.google\.com.

So which is it?

Also, on the expressions page there are 11 expressions available. However none of them have a very good examples or explanations. I guess if I were a hardcore programmer these would make more sense. But what about for the more average person?