What are UTM parameters for?
When a visitor arrives, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) usually labels the source on its own. For things like an email newsletter, a social media post or a link on a listing site, that guess falls short. With UTM parameters you add your own label to the link, so you can see separately what visitors from each link or campaign did.
The five standard parameters
- utm_source: where the traffic comes from. For example newsletter, instagram, facebook.
- utm_medium: the type of channel. For example email, sms, social, cpc.
- utm_campaign: the campaign name. For example summer-sale.
- utm_term: to tell paid search keywords apart, optional.
- utm_content: to tell apart two links or two images in the same ad, optional.
Google's help page recommends always using the source, medium and campaign trio when tagging a link. The other two are added as needed.
Example link
https://www.example.com/offer?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale&utm_content=top-button
After the question mark, parameters are joined with the & sign. A person clicking this link sees the same page; the tags are only for measurement.
Common mistakes
- Inconsistent capitalisation: according to Google, values are case sensitive, so Meta and meta count as different. Sticking to lowercase is the safest habit.
- Putting UTM on internal links: if a visitor clicks a UTM link while browsing inside your site, the real source of the session can be overwritten. UTM belongs only on links that bring people to your site from outside.
- Manually tagging Google Ads links: Google Ads identifies visitors itself through auto-tagging. If you need manual UTM, check the tagging settings in GA4 and Google Ads first, otherwise the data can get mixed up.
- Different spelling each time: newsletter, Newsletter and bulten produce three separate rows for the same thing. Fix the spelling in a shared sheet.
Where do you see it in GA4?
According to Google's help page, campaign data appears in the Traffic acquisition report under Acquisition. There you can split by dimensions such as session source/medium and session campaign to see how many visits and conversions each link brought. Menu names can change over time; if you cannot find it, check the current path on the help page.