An Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) tag is a code added to URLs to track traffic and campaigns in Google Analytics and other website reporting tools. It consists of several parameter values that provide information about the traffic source. Here is a quick explanation of the most common parameters:
- utm_source: This indicates the source that sent the traffic, such as a website, a newsletter campaign, or a social media platform (e.g. Facebook). This field must be included.
- utm_medium: This defines the type of traffic source, for example, CPC for paid advertising, organic for organic search, email for email marketing, etc. This field must be included.
- utm_campaign: This names the specific campaign or marketing effort. For example, “summer_sales-campaign”.
- utm_term: This parameter is typically used for paid search advertising (such as Google Ads) to specify the search term that led to the click.
- utm_content: This can be used to differentiate ads or links pointing to the same URL. For example, if you have two buttons on the same page, you can use this to differentiate between them.
- utm_cid: This is a unique identifier used in some cases to prevent Google Analytics from processing campaign URLs multiple times.
- utm_term (optional): This is used to specify the keyword in a paid search ad.
- gclid (optional): This is used specifically in Google Ads to identify the ad link.
For example, if you have a link to a website that you share on Facebook in a summer promotion, the UTM tag might look like this:
https://www.example.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sommer_kampanje
If you want to create these tracking links manually, you can use this tool for free:
https://ga-dev-tools.google/ ga4 /campaign-url-builder/
This will help you track where your traffic is coming from and which campaigns perform best in Google Analytics. Remember to use the parameters correctly and consistently for accurate data analyses.