UTM builder

What are UTM parameters?

When someone visits your site, your analytics can usually see that they arrived but not what brought them: the newsletter, the tweet, and the ad all collapse into the same anonymous click. UTM parameters fix that. They are small labels added to the end of a link, like utm_source=newsletter, that travel with every click and tell your analytics exactly where it came from.

Why it matters

Without them, most campaign traffic files itself under direct or unknown, and decisions about where to spend time and money get made blind. With them, every channel's clicks are separated cleanly, in any analytics tool, because the labels ride the URL itself. Nothing to install, nothing platform-specific.

The five parameters

UTM tags are plain query parameters your analytics tool reads to attribute a visit. Five exist; most links need three.

utm_source

Where the link lives: newsletter, google, x, a partner's site. The place, not the format.

utm_medium

The channel type: email, social, cpc, referral. A newsletter link is source=newsletter, medium=email.

utm_campaign

The push it belongs to: spring-launch, black-friday. Groups every link of one effort together.

utm_term

The paid keyword, mostly for search ads. Skip it everywhere else.

utm_content

Which variant was clicked: footer-cta versus hero-button. For telling two links in one place apart.

Naming that keeps reports clean

Analytics tools treat google and Google as two different sources, so pick lowercase once and never look back. Use hyphens instead of spaces, keep a short shared vocabulary for mediums (email, social, cpc), and tag only links you distribute elsewhere. Tagging your own site's internal navigation overwrites the real session source and quietly corrupts every report downstream.

Why shorten the tagged link

A tagged URL is long and reveals your campaign naming to anyone who reads it. Shortening it hides the noise, keeps the tags intact for your analytics, and adds a live stats page of its own: clicks, countries, referrers, and devices, counted from the moment you share it. No account needed, and the QR code generator can put the same short link on anything printed.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers about UTM tags and how tracking works here.