Marketing · Guide
UTM parameters explained
UTM parameters are the tags appended to a URL that tell analytics tools where a click came from. Five of them are standard. Three are required for clean reporting. The other two are situational — and getting them wrong is the most common reason campaigns look broken in GA4.
Last reviewed: April 2026
The five standard parameters
Google Analytics recognizes five UTM tags. Three are core — without them, traffic shows up as direct or referral. Two are optional but useful for paid search and creative testing.
- utm_source — the platform sending the click (e.g. facebook, newsletter, partner_blog).
- utm_medium — the broad channel category (e.g. cpc, email, social, affiliate).
- utm_campaign — your campaign name (e.g. spring_launch, bf2025).
- utm_term — the paid keyword that triggered the ad (paid search only).
- utm_content — the specific creative or link variant (used for A/B tests).
The three rules that prevent 90% of mistakes
Most broken campaign reports trace back to the same handful of issues. Pick a convention and apply it everywhere — including for partners who paste your links into their own systems.
- Always lowercase. "Facebook" and "facebook" become two sources.
- Use underscores, never spaces. Encoded spaces (%20) are ugly and fragile.
- Keep medium values from a closed list — cpc, email, social, organic, referral, affiliate. Free-text mediums fragment your reports.
When to use term vs content
utm_term is for the keyword in paid search. If you're not running search ads, you don't need it. utm_content is for distinguishing variants — a hero image vs a product image, a long headline vs a short one. If you're not testing creative, you don't need it either.
Adding empty or duplicate values to either parameter clutters reports without adding signal. Leave them out.
Build your URLs without typos
Hand-typing UTMs is where mistakes creep in. Use the UTM Builder to generate validated, properly encoded URLs, then drop them into your ad platform or email tool.