What are UTM parameters?

Tags you bolt onto the end of your own links so a click can identify itself.

https://example.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march-launch

They’re just query parameters. Nothing reads them but analytics tools, and the visitor never notices. The convention is old and universal, which is the good part - a UTM-tagged link works in every tool anyone will ever move to.

Feasible reads five:

• utm_source - where it came from. newsletter, twitter, partner-blog.
• utm_medium - what kind of thing it was. email, cpc, social, referral.
• utm_campaign - which push. march-launch, black-friday.
• utm_content - which variant, when you’re running two versions of the same ad.
• utm_term - the paid keyword.

The first three each get a tab in the Top Sources card, under Campaigns. Those tabs exclude untagged traffic, so a campaign report is only ever campaigns - no giant “(none)” row swamping the thing you’re trying to read.

Three rules that will save you a mess later:

1. Lowercase everything. Newsletter and newsletter are two rows forever.
2. Only tag links you control - your emails, your ads, your QR codes. Never tag an internal link between two of your own pages; you’ll restart attribution mid-visit and lose the real source.
3. Pick a naming scheme once and write it down, because you can’t fix a tag after it’s been clicked.

Untagged traffic still gets a source and a channel from the referrer. UTMs just make it exact.