UTM Builder

What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of a URL so that analytics platforms like Google Analytics 4 can tell exactly where a visitor came from, what campaign brought them, and which creative they clicked. Without UTM tags, traffic from ads, emails, and social posts often lands in the wrong default channel — or in the catch-all "Unassigned" bucket.

The five standard parameters

Every UTM URL can carry up to five parameters. Three are required by Google Analytics; two are optional but useful for deeper analysis.

utm_source — where the traffic comes from (google, facebook, newsletter)
utm_medium — the marketing channel (cpc, paid-social, email)
utm_campaign — your campaign name (summer-sale-2026)
utm_term — paid keyword or targeting term (optional)
utm_content — differentiates creatives or links (optional)

Naming conventions that save hours

UTM values are case-sensitive in GA4. "Google" and "google" create two separate sources in your reports. The builder above auto-lowercases everything and replaces spaces with hyphens. Stick to lowercase, use hyphens instead of spaces or underscores, and agree on a naming convention across your team before you launch your first campaign. Documenting your conventions in a shared spreadsheet prevents the "facebook" vs "Facebook" vs "fb" chaos that pollutes attribution data.

Common UTM mistakes

The most frequent mistake is tagging internal links. UTM parameters should only be used on links pointing to your site from external sources — ads, emails, social posts, partner sites. Adding UTMs to internal navigation links overwrites the original source and destroys your attribution chain. Another common error is inconsistent medium values: GA4 uses utm_medium to assign traffic to default channel groups, so "cpc" routes to Paid Search while "CPC" may land in Unassigned.

TIP

Use our GA4 channel checker to verify which default channel group your tagged URL will land in before you launch.

How GA4 uses your UTM values

GA4 reads utm_source and utm_medium to assign each session to a default channel group. For example, when medium is "cpc" and source matches a search engine, traffic goes to Paid Search. When medium is "email," it goes to Email. The campaign, term, and content parameters appear in the Traffic Acquisition and Session reports so you can compare performance across campaigns and creatives without any extra configuration.

Platform presets

The builder includes presets for the most common advertising platforms. Each preset fills in the source and medium values that align with GA4 default channel grouping rules, so your traffic is classified correctly from the start. You can override the preset values if your team uses different conventions.