UTM tags are the labels on your links that tell your analytics where a visitor came from. They are simple, free and the foundation of every attribution report — and they are also where most reporting messes start. Here is how to set them up once and stop thinking about them.
A UTM-tagged link is your normal URL with a few extra labels after a question mark, for
example ?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=spring-roof-repair.
Your website ignores them; your analytics and tracking read them.
utm_sourceWhere the visitor came from: google, facebook, bing, newsletter, mailer. The site or platform, not the format.
utm_mediumThe type of traffic: cpc, paid-social, email, print. This is what groups sources into channels in your reports.
utm_campaignWhich campaign, promotion or offer. The most important tag for ad reporting, and the one most often broken by renaming.
utm_termOptional. Traditionally the paid keyword. Some advertisers use it for the ad set or audience instead — fine, as long as you do it consistently.
utm_contentOptional. Tells apart two links in the same campaign: two ads, two buttons in one email, the front and back of a mailer.
Building tagged links by hand invites typos. Our free UTM builder assembles them for you and keeps the formatting consistent.
Analytics tools generally treat UTM values as exact text. Facebook,
facebook and fb become three different sources, and your
Facebook traffic is quietly split three ways. The fix is a short written convention that
everyone who builds links follows.
No exceptions. Case differences are the single most common cause of a source appearing twice in a report.
Spaces turn into %20 or + in a URL and are easy to get inconsistent. Use spring-roof-repair, not Spring Roof Repair.
Write down the handful of values you use and stick to them. Decide once whether Facebook and Instagram are separate sources or both facebook.
Put the specifics in the campaign or content tag. Source and medium should be boring and stable so channel reports stay clean year after year.
A shared spreadsheet of every tagged link — where it was used and when — saves hours the first time someone asks what promo-b was.
Typing a campaign's name into utm_campaign works until someone renames the
campaign, duplicates it or fixes a typo. From that day on, your reports show two
campaigns where there is one, and history no longer lines up.
Ad platforms can fill in tags for you automatically, using dynamic placeholders that are replaced with real values when the ad is clicked. Using the platform's numeric campaign ID instead of its name means the tag never changes, no matter what the campaign is called this week. Set them once at the account or campaign level and every new ad inherits them.
AuriaTrack derives its campaign codes from platform campaign IDs for exactly this reason: renaming a campaign never breaks the reporting. See how attribution works →
Ads Manager's URL parameters field accepts placeholders such as {{campaign.id}}, {{adset.id}} and {{ad.id}}.
ValueTrack parameters such as {campaignid}, {adgroupid} and {keyword} go in a tracking template or final URL suffix.
Supports its own dynamic parameters, including campaign and ad group IDs, in a similar tracking template.
Click a live ad, or use the platform's preview, and check the landing URL shows real IDs, not the raw placeholder text.
With auto-tagging switched on in Google Ads, every ad click arrives with a
gclid parameter — a unique ID for that one click. Google Analytics uses it
to pull in campaign details without any UTM tags at all. Meta adds a similar
fbclid to clicks from its apps.
Leave auto-tagging on. The click ID is what lets a closed deal be reported back to Google against the exact click that produced it, which is how you teach bidding to chase jobs rather than form fills (more on that in Google Ads Says 30 Conversions. Your CRM Says 9.). UTM tags and the gclid can sit on the same link; the UTMs serve every tool that does not speak Google's click ID, including your CRM.
Tags and click IDs only help if they are kept. A visitor who clicks today and calls next week has long since left the tagged URL behind. Capturing them into a first-party cookie on arrival — with the first touch stored once and never overwritten — is what lets the eventual lead inherit them. Why browser privacy rules make that harder than it sounds is covered in Why Your iOS and Safari Conversions Disappeared.
A UTM on a link from your homepage to your contact page tells analytics the visitor just arrived from a new source, overwriting the ad that actually brought them. Tags are for links that point to your site from somewhere else.
Google and google are two sources. One teammate's habit is enough to split every report you run.
Tagging your profile's website link is a good idea, but label it as organic, not cpc, or free profile traffic is counted as paid. And make sure the landing page does not redirect in a way that strips the tags off.
A QR code on a mailer or truck that points to your plain homepage is invisible in reports. Tag the link before you generate the code, and scan a printed proof before the full run — printed links cannot be fixed later.
Hand-typed campaign names drift with every rename. Platform IDs do not.
If last spring's mailer was print and this spring's is direct-mail, year-over-year comparisons fail. Consistency matters more than the exact word you pick.
UTMs tell you where visitors came from, not what they were worth. Clean tags are the first link in the chain. The payoff comes when the tagged visit is connected to a lead, the lead to a closed job, and the job back to the campaign — at which point the ROAS calculator and cost-per-customer calculator can work on real numbers. Phone calls need their own approach; see Your Best Leads Call. Your Ads Can't See Them.
Book a demo and we'll show you a tagged ad click followed all the way to the job it paid for.