How to use UTM parameters

UTM parameters are short tags added to the end of a link (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content) that tell your analytics tool exactly where a visit came from. Without them, a click from your newsletter, a podcast show note or a link in a Discord server often arrives with no referrer and is lumped into “direct”. With them, each of those clicks carries its own label.

A tagged link looks like this:

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

The five parameters

Source, medium and campaign are the ones you should set on every tagged link. Term and content are optional detail for when you want to compare keywords, ads or two links in the same email.

Naming rules that keep reports clean

UTM reports are only as tidy as the tags you type. Most of the mess in real accounts comes from the same handful of inconsistencies, so settle these once:

• Lowercase everything. Many analytics tools treat “Facebook” and “facebook” as two different sources.
• Pick one separator. Hyphens are easiest to read: spring-sale, not Spring Sale or spring_sale in different places.
• Keep a short list of mediums. email, social, cpc, video, referral, affiliate and podcast cover most businesses. Reuse them instead of inventing new ones per campaign.
• Write the conventions down. A shared sheet with the agreed source and medium values saves hours of cleanup when more than one person is creating links.

Examples for common channels

• Weekly newsletter: utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2026-10-14-issue
• YouTube description: utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=setup-tutorial
• Sponsored podcast: utm_source=podcast-name&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=q4-sponsorship
• Partner or affiliate: utm_source=partner-name&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=launch-bundle
• Two buttons in one email: same source, medium and campaign, with utm_content=top-button and utm_content=footer-link

Mistakes to avoid

• Tagging internal links. Never put UTM parameters on links from one page of your site to another. A new set of UTM tags replaces the ones the visitor arrived with, so the sale would be credited to your own navigation instead of the real channel.
• Tagging ads that already auto-tag. Ad platforms add click IDs such as gclid or fbclid on their own. UTMs on top are fine, but they must be consistent, or the same campaign will appear under two names.
• Trusting a redirect blindly. Link shorteners and some redirect chains drop query strings. Click your final link once and check that the tags survive to the landing page.
• Putting personal data in tags. UTM values end up in reports and browser history. Never include email addresses, names or user IDs.

Check your tags before you send

A broken tag is invisible until the report comes out wrong, by which time the campaign is over. Before a link goes into an email, a video description or an ad, run through three quick checks:

1. Open the final link in a private window and confirm the landing page loads with the parameters still in the address bar.
2. Compare the source and medium against your shared list. A new value should be a deliberate decision, not a typo.
3. After the first clicks arrive, look for the campaign in your analytics the same day. If it is missing, the link is fixable while it still matters.

Tags pay off most on channels that send no referrer: email, messaging apps, PDFs, QR codes, podcasts and links inside mobile apps. Tag those first. Search engines and most social sites already identify themselves, so UTMs there are about adding campaign detail rather than recovering lost traffic.

Build links in seconds

Our free UTM builder assembles a correctly encoded link from the fields above, so you do not have to hand-type ampersands. Use it for every link you share outside your own site.

How theBizness.ai uses your UTM tags

The theBizness.ai script reads all five UTM parameters on each visit and remembers them in the visitor’s browser for up to 30 days (Safari and Brave keep script-set storage for about seven), so a purchase made days later is still credited to the tagged campaign. When a visit has neither a referrer nor a utm_source, an ad click ID (gclid, fbclid, msclkid or ttclid) is used to name the ad network. Page addresses are stored without their query string, so other parameters on your URLs are not kept. The Sources page then shows visitors, orders, conversion rate and revenue for each source, medium and campaign, and you can compare channels in the find your best marketing channel guide. The UTM tracking docs cover the details, and features lists the reports.