With the proliferation of tracking tools like Google Analytics, real-time tracking of digital marketing campaigns has become possible. This allows you to see which campaigns are effective and which are not. To effectively track and segment campaigns, Google Analytics relies on UTM parameters.

What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters (also known as UTM tags) are a set of five URL parameters used to track online marketing campaigns. When marketers include links from their campaigns to their websites, they can use UTM parameters to track information about the campaigns through analytics tools. UTM parameters are added to the end of the URL website address and always begin with a question mark.

The name UTM parameters comes from the company that developed them, Urchin. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Google acquired Urchin in 2005 and rebranded and integrated the Urchin web analytics software into Google Analytics. UTM parameters are one of the fundamental frameworks of Google Analytics and are still used to provide information about Google Analytics dimensions, such as how to segment metrics by traffic channel or country.

Types of UTM parameters

1. utm_source
2. utm_medium
3. utm_campaign
4. utm_term
5. utm_content

If a marketer wants to add UTM parameters to a URL, for example https://www.shopify.com/ , they can add something like this (everything after the question mark is a UTM parameter):

https://www.shopify.com/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=customer_edu&utm_term=lookalike&utm_content=merchant_showcase_video

If you look closely at the URL above, you’ll notice that there are five separate UTM parameters, or key-value pairs. These are the only five parameters recognized by Google Analytics’ UTM system, and each has its own purpose:

utm_source

The purpose of this parameter is to tell Google Analytics where your website traffic is coming from. This is indicated by the "Source" dimension in Google Analytics. In the example above, the source is Instagram. Other examples of sources using UTM include email or Google. When using UTM parameters, Google Analytics requires utm_source parameter.

utm_medium

This parameter tells Google Analytics what type of traffic it is. The most important distinction for marketers is between paid traffic and organic traffic. Google Analytics considers all traffic organic by default, so marketers can use utm_medium to specify that the traffic is generated by advertising.

Examples include the following values:

• CPC ( Cost per click)
• CPM ( Cost per thousand impressions)
• PPC ( Pay per click)
• Retargeting (Retargeting)
• Paid (Paid)

Like utm_source , utm_medium is also a required parameter.

utm_campaign

This parameter represents the campaign name. This indicates how the marketer defines the campaign associated with the link. For example, a very specific campaign name can be used, such as "winter_2023_electronics_promotion_usa".

Or you can categorize your campaigns into broader categories, such as by sales funnel stage (e.g. “prospecting”), theme (e.g. “customer_edu”, like in the Shopify link example above), or goal (e.g. “purchases_bfcm” for a Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday promotion). It’s a good idea to structure your campaign naming in a way that provides the information you need.

Although utm_campaign parameter is not strictly required, its use is highly recommended.

utm_term

These UTMs were originally used to automatically define the keywords and search terms targeted by Google Search Ads campaigns. In other words, they broadly answered the question, “What were people searching for on Google when they clicked on my ad?” Today, Google Ads automates keyword and search term reporting, making these UTMs less necessary. However, marketers sometimes use them to define the audience they are targeting. For example, in the example above, they might be used as “lookalike” (a type of meta audience with similar characteristics to your existing customer base).

utm_term parameter is generally considered optional, and with the proliferation of auto-tagging in Google Ads (tracking without UTM parameters), it is no longer as required as it once was.

utm_content

utm_content parameter relates to the theme content of the ad and is useful when you have multiple ads in a campaign. This allows you to understand which ad is performing best. For example, Shopify could compare the traffic data from the above example ("merchant_showcase_video") to another hypothetical ad ("new_feature_showcase_video") to see which one converts better. Like utm_term parameter, utm_content is optional.

Benefits of using UTM parameters

Google Analytics can naturally infer context for some traffic without UTMs, but there are several reasons to use UTMs in advertising and email marketing campaigns:

Improved tracking certainty

Google Analytics can understand naturally when someone arrives at your site from a Google search. Thanks to the auto-tagging feature of Google Ads, it can also tell if the person clicked on your ad or clicked on a non-ad link on the search engine results page (SERP). However, Google Analytics struggles with other channels. For example, if someone clicks on a link in your marketing email newsletter, Google Analytics doesn’t know if they came from the email or simply typed the URL into their browser. UTM parameters solve this problem.

Email isn’t the only channel where UTMs provide greater certainty. For example, if an Instagram account uses the Link-in-Bio tool to share multiple links on its profile, Google Analytics may not understand that traffic should be considered social traffic. UTMs can help clarify this.

Clear contribution analysis

Without UTMs, Google Analytics wouldn’t know which traffic was the result of your ads and which traffic came from organic links, like a person’s Facebook post. This is especially important on social websites like Facebook or Pinterest, where links that are likely to come from ads (paid) can easily be confused with links that someone voluntarily shared (organic).

Control over testing

UTM gives marketers the power to decide what to test and analyze. Marketers can use UTM to organize their traffic into specific categories to get the data they need. For example, if you want to compare the traffic performance of image ads and video ads, you can collect this information by including “image” and “video” in their respective utm_content parameters.

How to create UTM parameters

UTM parameters are basically characters that are added to the end of a URL, so marketers can simply create a URL and add parameters to it. As long as you use the five core UTMs described above, you don’t need to set up anything in Google Analytics or configure anything on your website.

The process of creating UTM parameters consists of three steps:

1. Define the parameters to track

You should always include utm_source and utm_medium , and most marketers choose to also include utm_campaign . utm_term and utm_content are optional.

2. Create URL

You can either manually enter URL parameters and URLs, or use a tool like Google’s URL Builder . Ad platforms like Meta often provide settings to create UTM-based URLs directly within their ad platform.

3. Use links in your campaigns

Insert URLs with UTMs as links in ads, social media posts, emails, etc.

Best practices when using UTM parameters

To use UTM parameters effectively, there are a few important things to consider:

Consistent naming conventions

When you start using UTMs, it’s important to make sure your team uses consistent naming conventions for source (e.g., “facebook” or “facebook.com”), medium (e.g., “paid” or “ppc”), and campaign (e.g., “prospecting_usa” or “awareness_us”). Failure to use consistent conventions will make it much harder to analyze your data in Google Analytics. As a marketer, you can either set your own UTM code conventions or follow some of the commonly used examples.

Use lowercase letters

Since UTMs are case sensitive, if one UTM is "pinterest" and another is "Pinterest", Google Analytics will see this as two separate traffic sources. It's best to use lowercase letters in all UTMs to avoid scattering data.

Use only when useful

When marketers first learn about UTMs, they may be tempted to add every possible UTM to every link on their site on the internet. However, UTMs are only useful when used for analytics purposes. For example, if there is only one ad in a Meta campaign, there is no need to add utm_content parameter because the UTM campaign tag alone can tell you which ad it is.

How to analyze UTM parameter data

The purpose of UTM parameters is to provide Google Analytics with better data about your traffic. This allows you to understand where conversions are occurring, how engaged your visitors are, and which campaigns are most effective.

In GA4 (Google Analytics 4), the latest version of Google Analytics, you can find the results of UTM parameters in two places:

• Direct analysis through relevant dimensions . Each UTM parameter is directly linked to a specific dimension in GA4. These dimensions help you analyze what each parameter means.
  • utm_source = Source
  • utm_medium = Medium
  • utm_campaign = Campaign
  • utm_term = Session manual term
  • utm_content = Session manual ad content
• Indirect analysis through channel groups. Google Analytics uses channel groups to summarize traffic types based on rules for sources, mediums, and campaigns. GA4 accounts come with a default set of channel groups , and you can also create custom channel groups to fit your business.

UTM Parameters FAQ