Best Practices for Using UTM Parameters in Marketing Campaigns
Learn how to use UTM parameters to improve GA4 campaign tracking. Get naming conventions, examples, common mistakes, and best practices for consistent tagging.
Monika Boldak
Associate Director, Data Solutions
UTM parameters are one of the simplest ways to strengthen campaign tracking, yet many teams still use the Google Analytics data, clearer attribution, and a much better understanding of which marketing efforts are driving results. This guide walks through the essentials, explains how UTMs influence GA4 reporting, and offers practical recommendations and examples that teams can use right away.
Understanding UTM parameters
UTM parameters, short for Urchin Tracking Module parameters, are tags appended to URLs to track the source, medium, campaign name, and other variables associated with a marketing link. These parameters enable marketers to identify which campaigns, channels, or sources are driving traffic to their website accurately.
The five standard UTM parameters are:
UTM_source: Identifies the source of the traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook, newsletter).
UTM_medium: Describes the medium of the traffic (e.g., cpc, organic, email).
UTM_campaign: Specifies the name of the campaign.
UTM_term: Used for keyword tracking in paid search campaigns.
UTM_content: Used for differentiating similar content or links within the same campaign.
These fields give structure to your traffic. Without them, GA4 is left to guess where a user came from, and that uncertainty shows up in “Unassigned” or increased "Direct" traffic and incomplete analysis downstream.
Why UTMs Matter More in Google Analytics 4
GA4 relies heavily on utm_source and utm_medium to classify traffic into channels. Small inconsistencies like “Facebook” versus “facebook.com” or “Email” versus “email” can create entirely separate buckets. If your team uses UTMs without a shared structure, results become noisy and unreliable.
A clear UTM strategy helps you reduce Unassigned traffic, align with GA4 channel grouping, improve attribution modeling, and create more accurate BigQuery exports for deeper analysis. Strong UTM discipline also supports media activation, since cleaner source and medium values strengthen conversion signals going back into Google Ads.
For more on attribution, you can explore our post on GA4 Attribution with BiqQuery.
Creating a Clear and Consistent Naming Structure
The most important part of UTM governance is consistency. Before launching campaigns, define how your team will name each parameter. Keep everything lowercase, avoid spaces or special characters, and use simple separators like underscores.
A helpful pattern looks like this:utm_campaign=bf25_flashsale_shoes
orutm_campaign=newsletter_nov2025_updates
Create campaign names that describe what the user is clicking, not just the month or promotion. Clarity helps everyone on your team make sense of reports later.
Making Source and Medium Predictable
Standardizing utm_source and utm_medium gives GA4 the information it needs to correctly place traffic into channels. Use the same source names for each platform, such as google, facebook, linkedin, bing, tiktok, or newsletter. Medium should match GA4’s expectations, like cpc, email, social, display, or referral.
When these two fields are predictable, you spend far less time diagnosing irregularities in channel reports.
If you want a deeper explanation of how channel grouping works, visit our guide on
GA4 Default Channel Grouping.
Keeping UTMs Clean and Readable
A good UTM is descriptive, but not overloaded. Avoid adding unnecessary detail, long strings, or marketing language. Stick to practical, structured labels that tell your team precisely what the user clicked.
Try to avoid special characters like %, &, !, and spaces. They create duplicates and increase the chance of broken URLs or lost data. Simple alphanumeric labels with underscores tend to work best.
Testing Your URLs Before Launching
Before publishing a single link, test your UTMs. Open the URL in an incognito window, confirm that it loads correctly, and watch for redirects that might strip parameters. Check GA4’s real time report to confirm that the correct source and medium appear.
Tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder or a shared team spreadsheet help prevent typing errors and keep parameters aligned.
Tracking Internal Promotions the Right Way
UTMs are meant for external traffic only. Adding UTMs to internal links overwrites the user’s original attribution, which breaks session continuity and produces misleading reports. If you need to track internal banners, homepage promotions, or on-site placements, use a custom parameter or a custom event in Google Tag Manager instead. This gives you visibility without disrupting attribution paths.
If you want to tighten your governance and align tracking with privacy requirements, explore Tracking Promotions with Google Tag Manager.
How to set up UTM parameters so that GA4 understands them
Google Analytics is a large database that uses key/value pairs for channel groupings. If GA4 recognizes a source or medium, it will bucket it together with similar sources into Search or Social traffic. Similarly, GA4 will look at the medium to decide if it’s Email, Paid or Organic traffic.
If GA4 does not recognize the source or medium that you have assigned, it will bucket that traffic into the Unassigned channel, making your marketing analysis all the more difficult.
To avoid seeing unassigned traffic, marketers must follow Google’s suggestion for setting up source and medium parameters, as Google doesn’t allow for creativity and flexibility here. Below you’ll find a sampling of the most popular parameters:
Email - Source = email / e-mail /e_mail /e mail OR Medium = email / e-mail / e_mail / e mail
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Paid Search - Source matches a list of search sites as provided by Google AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$
Any traffic from paid ads on Google must have source=google rather than source=adwords or any other variation.
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Paid Social - Source matches a regex list of social sites as provided by Google AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$
Any traffic from paid ads on Facebook must have source=facebook rather than source=meta, source=fb, source=fbk or any other variation if it.
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Organic Social - Source matches a regex list of social sites as provided by Google OR Medium is one of (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social network”, “social media”)
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Display - Medium is one of (“display”, “banner”, “expandable”, “interstitial”, “cpm”)
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Affiliates - Medium = affiliate
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=myfavcreator&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Audio - Medium exactly matches audio
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=pandora&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
SMS - Source exactly matches sms OR - Medium exactly matches sms
https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=wunderkind&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Real Examples: Good and Bad UTMs
A poorly structured UTM might look like this:utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Sale!!25
The uppercase text, special characters, and vague naming all create problems.
A clearer version would be:utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bf25_flashsale_shoes
This version is predictable, readable, and easy to analyze.
In the example below, a number of UTM parameters have been set up incorrectly leading to traffic being attributed to Unassigned traffic. For example, you can see Unassigned internal links (featured-product/ website) and Unassigned email campaigns from Klaviyo. Additionally, there is inconsistency with tagging as different variations have been used for the same purpose.
To attribute the above UTMs to the correct Channels in GA4, the user can remove UTMs from the internal links, and tag the email links with utm_medium=email. For tracking internal links, users may wish to tag their links with a new parameter and then set it up as a custom dimension in GA4 - that way the new parameter will not affect attribution but can still be used for reporting purposes.
Creating a Governance Process That Works
Even teams with the best intentions fall into inconsistent tagging if they move fast without shared documentation. A simple governance plan can make a significant difference. Keep a living UTM guide that covers accepted values, naming patterns, tracking rules, and ownership. Review tagged links monthly and address any drift before it grows.
Having a process also helps new team members tag campaigns correctly from their first day.
Best practices for using UTM parameters in GA4
Standardize naming conventions: Consistency is key when it comes to naming conventions for UTM parameters. Establish a clear naming structure and stick to it across all campaigns to ensure accurate and organized data in GA4.
Avoid special characters and spaces: Special characters and spaces in UTM parameters can cause tracking issues. Stick to alphanumeric characters and use hyphens or underscores to separate words.
Use URL builders: Utilize online URL builders or built-in features in marketing platforms to generate UTM-tagged URLs accurately. Tools like Google's Campaign URL Builder can streamline the process and minimize errors.
Be descriptive but concise: While it's essential to provide enough information in UTM parameters to identify campaigns effectively, avoid making them too lengthy. Aim for descriptive yet concise parameters to maintain readability.
Track all marketing channels: Ensure that UTM parameters are implemented across all marketing channels, including email campaigns, social media posts, PPC ads, and any other promotional efforts. This comprehensive style of tracking provides a holistic view of campaign performance.
Consolidate similar campaigns: If you're running multiple variations of the same campaign, consolidate them under one overarching campaign name in the UTM parameters. Use additional parameters like UTM_content to differentiate between them.
Regularly review and update: Periodically review your UTM parameter strategy to ensure it aligns with evolving marketing initiatives and goals. Update naming conventions or add new parameters as needed to capture relevant data accurately.
Test and validate: Before launching campaigns, test UTM-tagged URLs to verify that they're tracking correctly in GA4. Monitor data in Google Analytics to confirm that campaign traffic is attributed correctly.
Use only on external links: Do not use UTM parameters on links or buttons on your own website. UTMs were designed to report on external traffic to your site and as such they will overwrite your original attribution if used internally.
Clean UTMs are the foundation of accurate multi-channel reporting. They give GA4 the clarity it needs to map paths to conversion, assign credit to touchpoints, and understand how campaigns work together. UTMs also support more reliable data for BigQuery modeling, audience building, and predictive analytics. When your inbound traffic is structured and consistent, everything built on top of it becomes more dependable.
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Best Practices for Using UTM Parameters in Marketing Campaigns
Learn how to use UTM parameters to improve GA4 campaign tracking. Get naming conventions, examples, common mistakes, and best practices for consistent tagging.
Monika Boldak
Associate Director, Data Solutions
March 13, 2024
UTM parameters are one of the simplest ways to strengthen campaign tracking, yet many teams still use the Google Analytics data, clearer attribution, and a much better understanding of which marketing efforts are driving results. This guide walks through the essentials, explains how UTMs influence GA4 reporting, and offers practical recommendations and examples that teams can use right away.
Understanding UTM parameters
UTM parameters, short for Urchin Tracking Module parameters, are tags appended to URLs to track the source, medium, campaign name, and other variables associated with a marketing link. These parameters enable marketers to identify which campaigns, channels, or sources are driving traffic to their website accurately.
The five standard UTM parameters are:
UTM_source: Identifies the source of the traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook, newsletter).
UTM_medium: Describes the medium of the traffic (e.g., cpc, organic, email).
UTM_campaign: Specifies the name of the campaign.
UTM_term: Used for keyword tracking in paid search campaigns.
UTM_content: Used for differentiating similar content or links within the same campaign.
These fields give structure to your traffic. Without them, GA4 is left to guess where a user came from, and that uncertainty shows up in “Unassigned” or increased "Direct" traffic and incomplete analysis downstream.
Why UTMs Matter More in Google Analytics 4
GA4 relies heavily on utm_source and utm_medium to classify traffic into channels. Small inconsistencies like “Facebook” versus “facebook.com” or “Email” versus “email” can create entirely separate buckets. If your team uses UTMs without a shared structure, results become noisy and unreliable.
A clear UTM strategy helps you reduce Unassigned traffic, align with GA4 channel grouping, improve attribution modeling, and create more accurate BigQuery exports for deeper analysis. Strong UTM discipline also supports media activation, since cleaner source and medium values strengthen conversion signals going back into Google Ads.
For more on attribution, you can explore our post on GA4 Attribution with BiqQuery.
Creating a Clear and Consistent Naming Structure
The most important part of UTM governance is consistency. Before launching campaigns, define how your team will name each parameter. Keep everything lowercase, avoid spaces or special characters, and use simple separators like underscores.
A helpful pattern looks like this:utm_campaign=bf25_flashsale_shoes
orutm_campaign=newsletter_nov2025_updates
Create campaign names that describe what the user is clicking, not just the month or promotion. Clarity helps everyone on your team make sense of reports later.
Making Source and Medium Predictable
Standardizing utm_source and utm_medium gives GA4 the information it needs to correctly place traffic into channels. Use the same source names for each platform, such as google, facebook, linkedin, bing, tiktok, or newsletter. Medium should match GA4’s expectations, like cpc, email, social, display, or referral.
When these two fields are predictable, you spend far less time diagnosing irregularities in channel reports.
If you want a deeper explanation of how channel grouping works, visit our guide on
GA4 Default Channel Grouping.
Keeping UTMs Clean and Readable
A good UTM is descriptive, but not overloaded. Avoid adding unnecessary detail, long strings, or marketing language. Stick to practical, structured labels that tell your team precisely what the user clicked.
Try to avoid special characters like %, &, !, and spaces. They create duplicates and increase the chance of broken URLs or lost data. Simple alphanumeric labels with underscores tend to work best.
Testing Your URLs Before Launching
Before publishing a single link, test your UTMs. Open the URL in an incognito window, confirm that it loads correctly, and watch for redirects that might strip parameters. Check GA4’s real time report to confirm that the correct source and medium appear.
Tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder or a shared team spreadsheet help prevent typing errors and keep parameters aligned.
Tracking Internal Promotions the Right Way
UTMs are meant for external traffic only. Adding UTMs to internal links overwrites the user’s original attribution, which breaks session continuity and produces misleading reports. If you need to track internal banners, homepage promotions, or on-site placements, use a custom parameter or a custom event in Google Tag Manager instead. This gives you visibility without disrupting attribution paths.
If you want to tighten your governance and align tracking with privacy requirements, explore Tracking Promotions with Google Tag Manager.
How to set up UTM parameters so that GA4 understands them
Google Analytics is a large database that uses key/value pairs for channel groupings. If GA4 recognizes a source or medium, it will bucket it together with similar sources into Search or Social traffic. Similarly, GA4 will look at the medium to decide if it’s Email, Paid or Organic traffic.
If GA4 does not recognize the source or medium that you have assigned, it will bucket that traffic into the Unassigned channel, making your marketing analysis all the more difficult.
To avoid seeing unassigned traffic, marketers must follow Google’s suggestion for setting up source and medium parameters, as Google doesn’t allow for creativity and flexibility here. Below you’ll find a sampling of the most popular parameters:
Email - Source = email / e-mail /e_mail /e mail OR Medium = email / e-mail / e_mail / e mail
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Paid Search - Source matches a list of search sites as provided by Google AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$
Any traffic from paid ads on Google must have source=google rather than source=adwords or any other variation.
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Paid Social - Source matches a regex list of social sites as provided by Google AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$
Any traffic from paid ads on Facebook must have source=facebook rather than source=meta, source=fb, source=fbk or any other variation if it.
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Organic Social - Source matches a regex list of social sites as provided by Google OR Medium is one of (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social network”, “social media”)
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Display - Medium is one of (“display”, “banner”, “expandable”, “interstitial”, “cpm”)
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Affiliates - Medium = affiliate
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=myfavcreator&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Audio - Medium exactly matches audio
example: https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=pandora&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
SMS - Source exactly matches sms OR - Medium exactly matches sms
https://www.napkyn.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-utm-parameters-in-marketing-campaigns?utm_source=wunderkind&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=Newsletter_2025
Real Examples: Good and Bad UTMs
A poorly structured UTM might look like this:utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Sale!!25
The uppercase text, special characters, and vague naming all create problems.
A clearer version would be:utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=bf25_flashsale_shoes
This version is predictable, readable, and easy to analyze.
In the example below, a number of UTM parameters have been set up incorrectly leading to traffic being attributed to Unassigned traffic. For example, you can see Unassigned internal links (featured-product/ website) and Unassigned email campaigns from Klaviyo. Additionally, there is inconsistency with tagging as different variations have been used for the same purpose.
To attribute the above UTMs to the correct Channels in GA4, the user can remove UTMs from the internal links, and tag the email links with utm_medium=email. For tracking internal links, users may wish to tag their links with a new parameter and then set it up as a custom dimension in GA4 - that way the new parameter will not affect attribution but can still be used for reporting purposes.
Creating a Governance Process That Works
Even teams with the best intentions fall into inconsistent tagging if they move fast without shared documentation. A simple governance plan can make a significant difference. Keep a living UTM guide that covers accepted values, naming patterns, tracking rules, and ownership. Review tagged links monthly and address any drift before it grows.
Having a process also helps new team members tag campaigns correctly from their first day.
Best practices for using UTM parameters in GA4
Standardize naming conventions: Consistency is key when it comes to naming conventions for UTM parameters. Establish a clear naming structure and stick to it across all campaigns to ensure accurate and organized data in GA4.
Avoid special characters and spaces: Special characters and spaces in UTM parameters can cause tracking issues. Stick to alphanumeric characters and use hyphens or underscores to separate words.
Use URL builders: Utilize online URL builders or built-in features in marketing platforms to generate UTM-tagged URLs accurately. Tools like Google's Campaign URL Builder can streamline the process and minimize errors.
Be descriptive but concise: While it's essential to provide enough information in UTM parameters to identify campaigns effectively, avoid making them too lengthy. Aim for descriptive yet concise parameters to maintain readability.
Track all marketing channels: Ensure that UTM parameters are implemented across all marketing channels, including email campaigns, social media posts, PPC ads, and any other promotional efforts. This comprehensive style of tracking provides a holistic view of campaign performance.
Consolidate similar campaigns: If you're running multiple variations of the same campaign, consolidate them under one overarching campaign name in the UTM parameters. Use additional parameters like UTM_content to differentiate between them.
Regularly review and update: Periodically review your UTM parameter strategy to ensure it aligns with evolving marketing initiatives and goals. Update naming conventions or add new parameters as needed to capture relevant data accurately.
Test and validate: Before launching campaigns, test UTM-tagged URLs to verify that they're tracking correctly in GA4. Monitor data in Google Analytics to confirm that campaign traffic is attributed correctly.
Use only on external links: Do not use UTM parameters on links or buttons on your own website. UTMs were designed to report on external traffic to your site and as such they will overwrite your original attribution if used internally.
Clean UTMs are the foundation of accurate multi-channel reporting. They give GA4 the clarity it needs to map paths to conversion, assign credit to touchpoints, and understand how campaigns work together. UTMs also support more reliable data for BigQuery modeling, audience building, and predictive analytics. When your inbound traffic is structured and consistent, everything built on top of it becomes more dependable.
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