How do UTM pa­ra­me­ters help with google UTM tracking and campaigns?

UTM pa­ra­me­ters are added to URLs to help analytics tools track where website traffic is coming from and how it performs. Without UTM tracking, data insights are limited and often imprecise. For instance, you might see traffic from Facebook, but not know whether it was triggered by your company’s post or someone else’s.

What are UTM pa­ra­me­ters?

The ab­bre­vi­a­tion UTM comes from the pre­de­ces­sor of Google Analytics, which was called Urchin Tracking Monitor. UTM pa­ra­me­ters, also referred to as UTM codes, are used in google UTM analytics to identify the origin of every click such as how many clicks came from the last Facebook post? How many from display ads? What share came from organic Google search, and so on?

Tech­ni­cal­ly speaking, UTM pa­ra­me­ters are nothing more than URL pa­ra­me­ters (query strings) appended to the URL, as shown in the following example (the UTM pa­ra­me­ters are all pa­ra­me­ters after the question mark):

https://ionos.com/digitalguide/example?utm_campaign=alfa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=cta1

How does UTM tracking work?

The different UTM pa­ra­me­ters are each marked with the prefix utm_. They consist of a key-value pair separated by an equals sign:

Parameter=Value

The values can largely be chosen freely. It’s best to use commonly un­der­stood terms like “ad”, “facebook”, “newslet­ter”, “internal”, and so on.

In­di­vid­ual pa­ra­me­ters—like any other query string—are appended after an initial question mark using &. In addition to the UTM pa­ra­me­ters, a query string may also include other URL pa­ra­me­ters. Thanks to the utm_ prefix, Google can identify which pa­ra­me­ters are meant for URL tracking and extract them from the query string.

UTM pa­ra­me­ters in detail

There are six UTM pa­ra­me­ters in total, two of which are mandatory: utm_source and utm_medium must always be included together. You can’t use just utm_source on its own. The remaining pa­ra­me­ters—utm_term, utm_campaign, utm_content, and utm_id—are optional and can be included as needed. The following sections explain each UTM parameter in more detail.

utm_source

The utm_source parameter iden­ti­fies the website or pub­li­ca­tion where the traffic orig­i­nat­ed. This could be the name of a social media platform (e.g., Facebook), an email service (e.g., Mailchimp), or a website (e.g., the name of a blog).

Note: Using your own domain name as utm_source is not rec­om­mend­ed, as it can confuse your analytics. Instead, use a term like “internal” or something similar.

utm_campaign

This parameter labels all links as­so­ci­at­ed with a par­tic­u­lar campaign. It allows you to evaluate your campaign across all channels and marketing assets in Google Analytics. Use a campaign name that is clearly un­der­stood by your entire team.

utm_medium

The utm_medium parameter specifies the type of ad­ver­tis­ing or marketing medium. This might be a display ad, newslet­ter, or blog post. Google rec­om­mends using broad terms rather than very specific ones: “email”, “cpc”, “display”, “social”, and so on.

utm_content

If you’re running two display ads within the same campaign, the utm_campaign and utm_medium pa­ra­me­ters alone won’t be enough to compare their per­for­mance. That’s where utm_content comes in: assign different content names for the ads, such as utm_content=slogan1 and utm_content=slogan2.

utm_term

The utm_term parameter iden­ti­fies the paid keyword as­so­ci­at­ed with the link in a PPC campaign. For Google Ads, this parameter is not required, as Google already tracks this in­for­ma­tion. However, utm_term is useful for search engine ad­ver­tis­ing outside of Google’s network—such as Bing—to dis­tin­guish paid traffic from organic.

utm_id

The utm_id parameter specifies a unique campaign ID used to identify and attribute a marketing campaign. In Google Ads, this UTM tracking parameter helps link campaigns with specific tracking data, enabling con­sis­tent cross-channel analysis. It’s also useful outside of Google Ads, such as with external ad networks or partner campaigns, to ensure unified at­tri­bu­tion and detailed reporting in Google Analytics.

How to set up UTM pa­ra­me­ters

The easiest way to set up UTM pa­ra­me­ters is by using the Campaign URL Builder.

Close

The URL generated by the tool—tech­ni­cal­ly a URL with an appended query string—can be copied and pasted. In this example, you might use the URL as a call-to-action link in a pro­mo­tion­al email. To avoid over­whelm­ing users with detailed pa­ra­me­ters, you can shorten the URL using an optional tool. The “Shorten Link” button redirects to Bitly, where you’ll need to create an account.

How to analyze UTM pa­ra­me­ters

In Google Analytics, you can view the values you’ve set for the UTM pa­ra­me­ters under “Ac­qui­si­tion” > “Report for new sessions generated.” This section displays the data for the pa­ra­me­ters you’ve con­fig­ured.