Updated
The five parameters
Source, medium and campaign are the three to always fill in. Term and content are optional.
- utm_source — where the click comes from: newsletter, linkedin, google.
- utm_medium — the type of channel: email, social, cpc, referral.
- utm_campaign — the specific initiative: spring-launch, black-friday-2026.
- utm_term — the paid keyword, when there is one.
- utm_content — which link or creative was clicked, useful for telling two versions apart.
Naming rules
- Use lowercase everywhere. Values are case sensitive, so Newsletter and newsletter become two separate rows.
- Use hyphens instead of spaces. Spaces turn into %20 and make links fragile.
- Keep medium to a short fixed list. Analytics tools group traffic into channels based on it, so email, social, cpc and referral work better than invented values.
- Name the campaign once and reuse it on every link in that campaign, across all channels.
- Write the convention down where the whole team can find it.
Examples
A link in a monthly newsletter: utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=email, utm_campaign=october-update.
The same announcement posted on LinkedIn: utm_source=linkedin, utm_medium=social, utm_campaign=october-update. The campaign matches, so both show up together in a campaign report and can still be split by source.
Mistakes that corrupt your data
- Tagging internal links. A UTM on a link between two pages of your own site starts a new session and overwrites where the visitor really came from.
- Mixing conventions, such as facebook in one campaign and fb in the next.
- Putting personal data in a parameter. Never include names, email addresses or customer IDs in a URL.
- Forgetting that UTM values are public. Anyone who sees the link can read them.
UTM links and SEO
A tagged URL shows the same content as the untagged one. As long as the page declares a canonical URL without the parameters, search engines treat them as one page and rankings are not affected.
