Set up Goals using Matomo AI Goal Recommendations

Cloud

The AI Goal Recommendations is an optional AI-powered feature to recommend Goals in Matomo that you may want to track. It builds on Matomo’s rule-based Goal Recommendations that remain available without enabling AI.

Note: AI Processing for AI Goal Recommendations can be enabled in Matomo Cloud and will be available for Matomo On-Premise soon.

Enable AI Goal Recommendations

Before using AI Goal Recommendations, users (with superuser access) must first allow AI processing in Matomo.

  1. Log in to Matomo as a superuser and navigate to Administration admin gear icon System > AI Processing.
  2. Review the settings before choosing to enable Non-analytics data for Goal Recommendations.

  3. Click Save.
    enable ai processing settings

  4. You can also enable this in Goals > Manage Goals where you can toggle on Allow AI Processing to enable AI features and consent to the required processing settings.
    enable ai goal recommendations

  5. When AI Processing is enabled in Matomo, go to Manage Goals > Goal Recommendations.
  6. Toggle on Use AI to improve suggestions if not already done and click Scan Again to identify new goals.
  7. To read the data privacy disclosure, click on the link next to the toggle, “What data is shared”?

  8. After the scan is complete, Goal Recommendations will appear where you can optionally choose to create or dismiss the suggested goal in your Matomo instance.
    ai goal recommendations results

  9. To add the goal, click Create Goal to add goals individually or click Create All Goals to use all recommendations.

  10. Where a goal shows the Start in Goal Form, click the button to open the Goal configuration and complete the setup.

Learn more about managing Goal Recommendations.

How AI Goal Recommendations work

When you request AI-powered recommendations, Matomo scans a limited number of pages on your website that your Matomo instance can access. These may include publicly accessible pages or, for some On-Premise configurations, non-public pages that are accessible from the Matomo server.

Matomo sends extracted and aggregated website signals, rather than the underlying page HTML. It also sends information about the website, existing Goals, and Goals identified by Matomo’s rule-based analysis. The rules-based Goal Recommendations is based on page visits, downloads, outbound links, visit duration and, in a few cases, events.

All scan results are suggestions only and Goals are not automatically created. You can review the proposed Goal and the URL it would track before deciding whether to create the Goal.

Visitor and tracking data stored in your Matomo instance is not accessed or sent to the AI provider for this feature.

Data processed and stored

What data is sent to the AI provider?

Matomo extracts only the signals needed to generate recommendations. The feature is designed to reduce website information to limited, structured signals before AI processing.

Depending on what is found on your website, the following information may be sent to the selected AI provider:

  1. The site URL;
  2. The number of pages scanned;
  3. Summaries of goals already configured for the site in Matomo (name, matchAttribute, patternType, pattern);
  4. Baseline Goals identified by Matomo’s rule-based goal analysis. This can include the Goal name, why it may be relevant, matching criteria, supporting evidence, source pages, example matches, and implementation information;
  5. Aggregated signals extracted from crawling the website’s own pages (a limited number of pages), such as:

Matomo does not send raw HTML of the crawled pages, scripts, or any visitor or tracking data stored in Matomo instance.

Ai goal recommendations workflow

The feature is not designed to process personal data. However, information sent to the configured AI provider could contain personal data in some cases.

For example, information extracted from a page that the Matomo instance can access could include a person’s name in a URL or link label. Existing Goal information could also contain personal data, for example, if a person’s name is included in the Goal name or matching criteria.

The AI output consists of proposed Matomo Goals. The feature does not intentionally include personal data in these recommendations.

When is the data sent to the AI provider?

Data is sent only when you enable AI to recommend goals and run a new scan. A daily limit restricts how often AI-enhanced scans can run. If you do not use the AI option, Matomo’s standard rule-based Goal recommendations remain available, and no information is sent to an AI provider.

What is the data used for?

The AI provider analyses the aggregated website signals and existing Goal information and proposes Goals that could be worth tracking, such as form submissions, downloads, or visits to specific pages. For example, it may recommend tracking:

  • visits to an important contact or confirmation page;
  • form submissions;
  • downloads; or
  • other relevant actions identified from your website.

Matomo sanitises each suggestion for technical purposes before showing it. It does not moderate the content of AI-generated suggestions. The data is used only to generate enhanced goal recommendations. You decide which suggested Goals, if any, you want to create.

What usage data does Matomo receive?

Matomo stores the result of the latest Goal Recommendation scan for the website so that you can return to the recommendations without having to run the scan again. This includes information relating to the most recent scan per site, such as:

  • the suggested goals;
  • whether AI was used;
  • the scan timestamp; and
  • which suggestions were dismissed.

Each new scan overwrites the previous scan results, so only information from the latest scan is retained. There is no separate retention period for earlier scan results.

Matomo also stores limited operational data necessary to provide the feature. This includes a per site count of AI scans performed each day to enforce the daily limit, and a per user timestamp recording when that user most recently performed an AI-enabled scan.

Your AI provider and model

The AI provider depends on whether you use Matomo Cloud or Matomo On-Premise.

Matomo Cloud

AI Goal Recommendations use an AI service selected and configured by Matomo. The provider that will process the information is identified in the What data is shared? information shown in Matomo under Goals > Manage Goals.

ai goals what data is shared

For Matomo Cloud, the currently configured AI provider is AWS Bedrock, and the AI processing is configured to take place within the EU.

Data sent to the AI provider through AI Goal Recommendations is not used to train AI models. We select AI providers to ensure that prompts and outputs are not retained and are not used for model training under the service terms.

Matomo On-Premise

Your organisation controls which supported AI provider is configured for your Matomo instance. Depending on your configuration, the data may be processed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock, or an OpenAI API-compatible provider including a self-hosted provider.

A superuser must configure an AI Provider before AI Goal Recommendations can be used. If no provider is configured, Matomo’s rule-based recommendations can still be used without AI.

Whether data is used for AI model training depends on the AI provider and service your organisation configures. Your organisation controls its relationship with the AI provider and should check the provider’s terms, privacy information, and data-use settings to understand how submitted data may be used.

AI use and access controls

AI Goal Recommendations provides controls to manage the use of AI:

  • AI is not required to use Recommended Goals.
  • If AI Processing is enabled by a superuser, the AI Goal Recommendations will be toggled on or it uses the last scan’s setting.
  • You can see what information will be shared before using AI.
  • Information is sent to an AI provider only when the AI option is selected.
  • You decide whether to create any of the Goals recommended by AI.
  • Rule-based recommendations remain available without AI.
  • On Matomo On-Premise, a superuser controls the configured AI provider and can disconnect it.

Privacy: Roles and responsibilities

Matomo Cloud

To the extent any personal data is contained in:

  • The prompts: You are the controller and we are the processors;
  • The AI feature usage data (What usage data does Matomo receive?): We process the data as controllers as per the Matomo Cloud Privacy Policy.

Matomo On-Premise

You are the controller; we do not process any data on your behalf.

Things to know

AI-generated suggestions can vary between scans and providers. They are based on the limited website information available to the feature and may not identify every Goal that would be useful for your website.

AI Goal Recommendations are starting points to review, not a complete or deterministic list of everything worth tracking on a site.

Previous FAQ: Ask Matomo