UTM parameters: a simple guide to tagging every link you share
What utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign mean, how to name them so your reports stay clean, and examples for social posts, newsletters and ads.
NoirTrack team·Follow
You share a link to your product in a newsletter, two social posts and a paid ad. A week later your analytics shows a bump from "Direct" and a vague referrer. Which of the four worked? Without tags, you cannot tell.
UTM parameters fix that. They are small labels you add to the end of a link, so every visit carries a note saying exactly where it came from.
What a tagged link looks like
https://yoursite.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-launch
Everything after the ? is the tag. The page is the same, the visitor sees nothing different, but your analytics now knows this visit came from the October launch email.
The five parameters
| Parameter | What it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source |
Which site or sender? | newsletter, x, google, producthunt |
utm_medium |
What kind of channel? | email, social, cpc, referral |
utm_campaign |
Which push or promotion? | october-launch, black-friday |
utm_content |
Which version of the link? | header-button, video-post |
utm_term |
Which paid keyword? | analytics-tool |
Only utm_source is really needed. The rest add detail. utm_content is handy when one email has two links and you want to know which one people clicked.
Naming rules that keep reports clean
Tags are case-sensitive in most tools, and every spelling becomes its own row. Newsletter, newsletter and news-letter show up as three different sources. A few rules prevent that mess:
- Always lowercase. No exceptions.
- Use hyphens, not spaces.
october-launch, notOctober Launch. - Keep a short list of mediums.
email,social,cpc,referral,affiliate. Do not invent new ones per campaign. - Name the campaign after the push, not the date.
pricing-changeis easier to read later than2026-10-04. - Write it down. A small shared doc with the names you use saves arguments later.
Examples you can copy
A post on X
?utm_source=x&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch-week
A newsletter, two links
?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-update&utm_content=top-link
?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-update&utm_content=footer-link
A paid search ad
?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand-search&utm_term=privacy-analytics
What about ads without tags?
Ad platforms add their own click ids to links, like gclid for Google Ads or msclkid for Microsoft Ads. NoirTrack reads those too, so an ad click counts as paid traffic even when you forgot the UTM tags. Tags are still better, because they also tell you which campaign it was. See Campaigns & UTM for the full list.
Where to see the results
In NoirTrack, open the Sources card and switch to Campaigns. Pick UTM sources, mediums, campaigns, contents or terms to see visitors and revenue for each. Because revenue sits next to every campaign, you can tell which one paid off, not just which one got clicks. More on that in how revenue attribution works.
Questions, answered.
No. Search engines ignore them for ranking, and most sites set a canonical URL so the tagged and untagged versions count as the same page. Just do not use UTM tags on internal links between your own pages.
Only utm source is needed for a visit to be grouped. Adding utm medium and utm campaign is strongly recommended, because they make reports much easier to read.
No. Tagging links from one page of your site to another overwrites where the visitor originally came from, so your real source gets lost.
In most analytics tools, yes. Keep every tag lowercase so Newsletter and newsletter do not show up as two different sources.
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Written by NoirTrack team
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