Analytics

UTM Parameters

Query-string tags that tell analytics which campaign a visit came from.

UTM parameters are tags appended to a URL — utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign — that tell analytics where a visit came from. They only affect measurement, not ranking, but they do create a distinct URL for each variant, which is why pages carrying them need a canonical tag pointing at the clean address.

Definition

The five conventional parameters are utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content. Analytics reads them to attribute a session to a campaign.

Two disciplines matter. Consistent casing and naming, because Newsletter and newsletter become separate rows forever. And never tagging internal links — doing so restarts the session attribution and overwrites the original source with your own site.

Why It Matters

Without UTMs most campaign traffic lands in "direct" or an unhelpful referrer, and there is no way to tell which email or post produced it. With inconsistent ones, the report is worse than none.

Example

?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=launch. The page should still declare rel="canonical" pointing at the URL without parameters.

Two rules that prevent most UTM problems

Never tag internal links. A UTM on a link between your own pages restarts session attribution, overwriting the original source with your own site. The campaign that actually brought the visitor disappears from the report, replaced by an internal referral — and because it looks like data, nobody questions it.

Fix the casing convention once. Newsletter, newsletter and NEWSLETTER are three permanent rows in every report that uses them. Analytics does not normalise case, and historical data cannot be re-tagged. Lowercase everything, decide the vocabulary for utm_medium before the first campaign, and write it down.

Separately: a tagged URL is a distinct URL to a search engine, so any page that might be shared with tags attached needs a self-referential canonical.

How SlapMyWeb checks this

The audit reports pages reachable at more than one URL and whether each declares a canonical, which is how UTM-tagged variants become a technical problem rather than only a measurement one. Build consistent tags with the UTM builder.

Related Tools

Utm Builder

Know the term.
Check your own site.

A free audit tells you whether this is currently costing you score points — and exactly what to change.

Run a free audit

Free foreverNo signupResults in 30s