What are UTM codes, and what does ?utm_source in a link mean?
What the tags at the end of a link mean, a naming scheme for a small business, and where they show up in reports
You run a café, a boutique or a hair salon. Your website link sits in your Instagram bio, and the same address is printed as a QR code on the flyer by the till. Visitors arrive, but you cannot tell who sent them: Instagram, the flyer, or a Google search? UTM codes exist to answer exactly that question.
Or perhaps something else brought you here: someone sent you a link and the address ended in a long tail such as ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email. Nothing to worry about. That tail does not change what the page shows and installs nothing on your device; it simply tells the site's owner "this visitor came from the newsletter". In other words, a UTM code is a return-address label stuck onto a link.
Reading the tail of a link
A UTM link has two parts. Everything up to the question mark is the page's own address; that is where the browser takes you. After the question mark come name=value pairs separated by the & sign. Each pair whose name starts with utm_ is a tag describing where the visit came from.
The diagram below takes a link placed in an Instagram bio apart. Delete the tags and the page still opens exactly the same; the difference only shows up in the site's statistics.
Five tags and the question each one answers
Google Analytics' help page lists more of them (utm_id, utm_source_platform and others), but these are the five used in everyday work. The first three only make sense together; the last two are optional.
- utm_term records which keyword was clicked in search ads such as Google Ads; if you do not advertise, leave it out
- The UTM Builder on this site adds the first four tags; it has no utm_term box
- The campaign name is identical on both channels, so "how many people did the October sale bring in total" is answered on a single row of the report
| Tag | Question it answers | Bio link | Flyer QR |
|---|---|---|---|
| utm_source | Who sent the visitor? | flyer | |
| utm_medium | What kind of channel? | social | |
| utm_campaign | Which promotion? | october-sale | october-sale |
| utm_content | Which link within the campaign? | bio | till-flyer |
| utm_term | Which paid search keyword? | not used | not used |
A naming scheme for a small business: decide once, write it the same way every time
Google's help page says it plainly: tag values are case sensitive, so utm_source=google and utm_source=Google are not the same. Write Instagram one day and instagram the next, and your report splits in two with neither row telling the whole story.
The easiest fix is to write the values down once and keep them in the notes app on your phone. As a rule, use lower case only, a hyphen instead of a space, and no accented letters: till-flyer, not "Till Flyer". The tool on this site does that conversion for you while "Clean up spelling" is switched on. For a small business, this scheme is usually enough:
- Instagram bio → source: instagram · medium: social · content: bio
- Instagram story → source: instagram · medium: social · content: story
- Facebook page post → source: facebook · medium: social
- Flyer, business card or poster QR → source: flyer, card or poster · medium: print
- Website link in your Google Business Profile → source: google · medium: organic · content: business-profile
Where to see the results in Google Analytics
For UTM to work, your site needs Google Analytics (or a similar measurement tool) installed; tags on their own count nothing. If your site was built with a hosted website builder, look for a "Google Analytics" setting in its dashboard; if it is not connected, no data is collected at all.
According to Google's help page, the report is Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Open Analytics, click the Reports icon on the left, and open the traffic report under Acquisition. Click the small arrow in the first column heading of the table and choose Session source/medium or Session campaign; the instagram / social and flyer / print rows appear side by side. Labels in the interface can shift slightly as Google updates it; the words to look for are "traffic" and "campaign".
Using print for the flyer in the scheme above has a cost: Google's default channel rules contain no medium for printed material. In the channel view those visits therefore land in the Unassigned row, but in the source/medium view they sit separately and legibly as flyer / print. Read the flyer's contribution from that second view.
Before you publish your link, click it once yourself and look at the Realtime report in Analytics: if your visit appears there under the source name, the tags work. Standard reports fill in with a delay, so an empty report on the same day is not an error.
Google Analytics Help: collect campaign data with UTM parameters →
Before you share: what never goes into a link
UTM tags are not hidden. Anyone who receives the link can read them in the address bar, they show up in screenshots, and they travel unchanged when the link is forwarded. A tag value should therefore only ever be a word you are happy for everyone to see.
Google Analytics' own rules point the same way: the URL path and its parameters must not contain personally identifiable information. Putting a customer's name, phone number or email address in a tag exposes their details and also puts your Analytics account in breach of the rules.
- Do not write: jane-smith, 07700…, customer@example.com, an order number
- Do not write: a discount code you have not announced yet, or an internal campaign budget
- Fine to write: general labels such as instagram, flyer, october-sale, bio
- Remember: if someone forwards your Instagram link to a WhatsApp group, those visits still count as instagram; UTM carries the link's first source, not its last stop
Do UTM codes affect your Google ranking?
No, they neither lift nor lower it. The tags exist to feed your analytics tool, not to tell the search engine anything. Google treats the tagged and untagged addresses of the same page as copies of one piece of content and picks one as the main address; on a properly set-up site that is the untagged one.
The real risk lies elsewhere: adding UTM to links inside your own site. Tag the link from your home page to your menu page and the information about where the visitor actually came from is overwritten, while your internal links multiply for no reason. Use UTM only on links you place outside your site.
Can you strip the tags from a link you received?
Yes. If you would rather not pass on where a link came from when you share it, delete the pieces after the question mark that start with utm_; the page still opens. The one thing to watch: if there are other parameters after the question mark that do not start with utm_ (for example ?id=482 or ?colour=blue), leave them alone, because the page may depend on them to know which product to show.
If the address is full of signs like %20 or %C3%A9 and impossible to read, paste it into the URL Encode and Decode tool on this site and choose Decode; the codes turn back into spaces and accented letters, and you can see at once which parts are tags.
Frequently asked questions
What does UTM stand for?
Urchin Tracking Module. The name comes from Urchin, an analytics program that Google bought. UTM codes are labels added to the end of a link that tell a site's statistics tool where a visitor came from; they do not change how the page looks or what it contains.
Should I add UTM to the QR code on a flyer?
It is the most practical way to separate visits that come from printed material. Visitors arriving through an untagged QR code often show up in Analytics as direct traffic, and the flyer's share disappears. Before turning the tagged address into a QR code, click the link once yourself to confirm it works.
Does a long UTM link break or stop working?
Length does not affect whether the link works; the browser carries everything after the question mark to the page, and the page opens the same. Problems usually come from copying: if the end of the link is cut off, the last tag is left half-written. Before sharing, open the link once and check in the address bar that the tags are complete.
If a link I got has utm_source in it, am I being tracked?
UTM tags say which channel the link was distributed through, not who you are; everyone who received the same link carries the same tag. Long, random strings of letters and digits that look personal to you are a different matter; you can delete those pieces too before sharing.
Why is my UTM data not showing in Analytics?
There are three common reasons: Analytics is not installed on the site, the tags were dropped while the link passed through a redirect, or the reports have not filled in yet. Look for your own click in the Realtime report first; if it is not there, check the installation.
Last updated: October 12, 2026