How to use UTM parameters so campaign traffic shows up correctly
Add utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign to links you post outside your site, such as in emails, social posts, ads and QR codes, so your analytics can say where each visit came from. Write every value in lowercase from an agreed list, and never put UTM tags on links between your own pages.
Why links need tagging
Analytics tools work out where a visitor came from mainly from the referrer, the address of the page they clicked on. Many clicks arrive with no referrer at all: links in email apps, PDFs, messaging apps, QR codes and some social apps. Without tags, that traffic lands in "direct", indistinguishable from someone typing your address. UTM parameters are labels you add to the end of a link, such as ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-menu, which survive the click and tell the tool what to call the visit.
The parameters
utm_source- Who sent the visitor:
newsletter,instagram,google,partner-cafe. Required. utm_medium- The kind of channel:
email,social,cpc,qr,referral. Required. utm_campaign- The specific push:
spring-menu-2026,open-day. Required. utm_content- Which link or creative within the campaign:
header-button,story-2. Optional, useful for comparing two versions. utm_term- The paid search keyword. Optional, mostly filled in automatically by ad platforms.
Google's campaign URL documentation treats source, medium and campaign as the ones to always include, and notes that values are case-sensitive: Email and email are reported as two different mediums.
Set up a naming scheme first
Tags are only as useful as their consistency. Decide the allowed values once, write them in a shared sheet, and build every link from it.
| Channel | utm_source | utm_medium | utm_campaign example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your email newsletter | newsletter | october-offers | |
| Instagram bio or story | social | autumn-launch | |
| Facebook paid ad | cpc | autumn-launch | |
| Printed flyer QR code | flyer | qr | high-street-flyer |
| Google Business Profile website link | organic | business-profile | |
| Partner's website | partner-name | referral | joint-event |
- Lowercase only, with hyphens instead of spaces.
- Medium describes the channel type, source names the specific sender. Keep the medium list short.
- Campaign names that still make sense next year: add a month or year.
- No personal data in tags. Never put an email address or name in a URL; links get forwarded and logged.
Build and use a link, step by step
Here's how to use UTM parameters on a single link, from choosing the page to logging where you posted it.
- Start from the exact page you want people to land on, copied from the live site, such as
https://www.example.com/book/. - Add the tags by hand or with Google's Campaign URL Builder, which is free and doesn't need an Analytics account.
- Shorten it if it's long or printed. For QR codes, a shorter URL makes a simpler code that scans more reliably.
- Click it yourself and confirm the page loads, with the tags still in the address bar after any redirect.
- Log the link in your sheet with the date and where it was posted.
- After the campaign, compare channels by visits and, more importantly, by what visitors did: enquiries, bookings, sales.
Where not to use them
- On links between your own pages. In many tools a tagged internal link starts a new session and overwrites the real source.
- In your Google Business Profile with a redirecting shortener. Profile links should go directly to your site; a plain tagged URL is fine.
- On links you want people to share, like your home page in an email signature. Shared copies carry your tags and muddy the numbers.
UTM tags and Anticode analytics
Anticode's analytics count page views per site per day, by source, without cookies, and list AI assistants' referrals as their own source. They don't report by campaign name or by page. When a visit arrives with no referrer, a utm_source such as newsletter or instagram helps it get filed under a source instead of direct, and a paid medium such as cpc files it as ads. For a per-campaign breakdown, compare totals across the dates each campaign ran, or count results where they happen: enquiries in your form submissions, sales in your payment provider. Published design-engine pages run no scripts and carry no third-party trackers, so you can't add another analytics tag to them; see cookie-free traffic tracking.
Checking it worked
Click a tagged link from a phone, in the app where you'll post it, then look in your analytics for that source on that day. If it shows as direct, check that a redirect or shortener isn't stripping the query string. Search engines generally ignore tracking parameters when choosing which URL to show, especially if the page has a canonical tag naming its clean address.
Questions people ask
Do UTM parameters hurt SEO?
Not when used on outside links. Search engines fold tagged URLs into the clean page, and a self-referencing canonical makes that explicit.
What's the minimum I need?
Source, medium and campaign. Content and term are optional.
Why is my email traffic still showing as direct?
Either the links weren't tagged, or a redirect dropped the tags. Some email tools add their own tracking redirect; check the final URL after clicking.