UTM, an abbreviation of Urchin Tracking Module, is a code that can be added to the end of any URL to make it more informational for the Analytics.
Once you know the proper use of UTM parameters, you can create UTM links manually. If you are a beginner or need a basic functionality of UTM link, you can use Google’s UTM link builder.
Here’s a quick tutorial demonstrating how to track marketing campaigns using the URL Builder tool.
In this article, I will share more about how you should use the UTM links and how to leverage its potential using an analytics tool like Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Why should you use UTM links?
UTM links are commonly used to pass additional data about a link to your analytics tool. Additional data can be appended as UTM parameters at the end of any URL in the UTM link format.
If you have to measure your web or app activities regularly, the UTM links are a better option to add additional data to your analytics.
Let’s see how UTM links could help us by overcoming the limitations of a typical Analytics tool.
For example, if you click on a URL with the parameter FBCLID or GCLID, the analytics already know what network might have passed those parameters and will categorize it to the right channel group. This is possible because Google Analytics already has a list of identified sources and categories.
If you are using an analytics tool like GA4, it will properly add all the link clicks with the “FBCLID” parameter to a channel group called “Facebook” and likewise add all the links to “Google” which has the parameter “GCLID”.
For every analytics, there is already a set of known networks from which the traffic is coming. That is why, in the above-mentioned example, GA4 could track the link clicks properly even if the FBCLID and GCLID were not a part of UTM links and parameters.
What if GA4 doesn’t receive hints like link referer, ad network details, or anything that helps to feed the link information data?
That’s where UTM parameters come to the rescue.
If used properly, UTM parameters can communicate with GA4 and provide the missing information in a way GA4 can understand.
What are UTM Parameters?
UTM parameters are the part of a UTM link that we append to a URL followed by a “?” question mark. These parameters convey information about the link’s source, purpose, content, and placement details about a link to the Analytics.
In a UTM link, there are five parameters used in general. There won’t be any issues if you change the order of the parameters. Let’s see what the parameters mean and how it looks in the GA4 dimension.
| Parameter | Purpose | GA4 Dimension |
| utm_source | UTM source is where the traffic is coming from. | Session source |
| utm_medium | UTM medium is the category of the traffic that can be grouped in. | Session medium |
| utm_campaign | UTM campaign is used to group the links if it was a part of any specific campaign. | Session campaign |
| utm_term | UTM term is used to identify paid search keywords. | Session manual term |
| utm_content | UTM content is used to identify the placement of the link or to set the content dimension or variations. | Session manual ad content |
When you add parameters to a URL, you should at least use utm_source and utm_medium. The other parameters, utm_term, utm_campaign, and utm_content are optional.
It is mandatory to follow the above rule if you want to get better results with UTM links. Otherwise, it would be hard for the analytics to determine where the link clicks are coming from.
I’ve seen people ignoring the utm_campaign, but I strongly advise using it so you can better understand your campaign performance based on the link clicks.
Google Analytics has a reference guide explaining how to properly set up a UTM link.
UTM Parameters: The Best Practices
- Always use lowercase letters for all parameters. That means if you use the parameter “Google” for some links and “google” for others, GA4 will treat them as 2 different things. Refer to Campaigns and traffic sources for a technical overview.
- Replace blank spaces in parameters with a plus symbol or a dash. When you add a “+” symbol between the terms of UTM parameters, the GA4 will treat it as a space when it comes to the reporting dashboard.
- Be consistent. This is an important point to consider. Suppose many people are working on your website, especially with the links. In that case, I recommend keeping a spreadsheet like this (Thanks to KPPlaybook), and you have to make sure everyone in your team follows the same URL structuring pattern for better traffic tracking.
How to Minimize Direct and Unassigned Traffic with UTM links?
I often see a lot of traffic, grouped as Direct and unassigned channels. This can also be reduced with the proper use of UTM links.
Before knowing how UTM helps in such cases, let’s know more about how those links got assigned to Direct and unassigned channels.
What is Direct Channel in GA4?
Direct traffic is when people visit your website from another website or app without any referrer information about the external click source.
If a link had any information about its source, GA4 might put those sessions as unassigned.
Many folks believe that direct traffic means bookmarks or people entering the website address directly. This can indeed appear as direct traffic, but there are also many other ways that direct traffic comes to a website.
For example, if a user visits your website from a social site like Mastodon, it will not pass any link click information for outbound clicks.
Like Mastodon blocks outbound links information, any other websites or apps that use rel-noferrer on their links will be grouped under the channel “Direct” on your analytics.
How to track the untrackable traffic with UTM Links?
In such cases, you can use UTM parameters to add more information about the referrer to the traffic from external link clicks. When a user clicks a UTM link, the GA4 gives higher priorities to the URL parameters and are sent to Analytics. Those parameter values are then visible in the Traffic acquisition report.
In this way, you can categorize the uncategorized traffic that was grouped in the “Direct” channels on your Analytics. UTM parameters can help you track the untrackable traffic, that was previously unknown to the GA4.
Whenever you manually use UTM parameters, ensure it aligns with Google’s channel grouping rules to get it properly reflected on your Analytics dashboard.
I will explain the things to note while choosing the UTM parameters (according to the channel grouping rules) in the later part of this article.
What is an Unassigned Channel in GA4?
Unassigned traffic in GA4 refers to the website traffic which is not attributed to any of the default channel groups. It is because GA4 isn’t sure where to place the traffic.
This traffic contains some information from the referrer or the parameters, however, GA4 couldn’t group it under any of its known channels.
Google uses certain rules (called ‘channel rules‘) to group similar website traffic sources (usually all belonging to the same traffic medium).
For example, Consider the following traffic sources:
- google (as in google / organic)
- yahoo (as in yahoo / organic)
- bing (as in bing / organic)
- aol (as in aol / organic), etc.
Since they all have the same traffic medium, ‘organic’, they will be grouped together under the channel group ‘organic search’.
Google does not have any pre-defined channel rules to group traffic sources that have either user-defined sources and mediums or they are (not set).
So the GA4 will put these traffic sources under the ‘unassigned’ channel group.
As I said in the earlier part of this post, while working with UTM parameters, you should strictly follow the channel rules for manual traffic wherever you can so that your website traffic is attributed to one of Google‘s default channel groups.
Google has already published a list of Default Channel groups with a description to understand the differences and right use of those channels.
Lets go through an example to understand how the analytics will treat an URL with UTM parameters.
Consider the following URL of a paid Facebook ad:
https:// www. example .com/beautiful-nature/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=first-fb-ad&utm_campaign=awareness-campaign&utm_content=ad-copy1
The above URL would be processed into the following final dimension values:
- source=facebook
- medium=first-fb-ad
- campaign=awareness-campaign
- content=ad-copy1
According to Google Analytics Channel grouping defenitions, the criteria for a URL to be treated as the “Paid Social” Channel is,
| Channel Name | Requirement to fit in the GA4 Analytics Report |
| Paid Social | The source matches a regex list of social sites AND Medium matches regex ^(.cp.|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$ |
It says, the URL should meet 2 requirements in order to fit into the “Paid Social” channel.
In the example URL, utm_medium is first-fb-ad. That term is purely custom and not a system-defined traffic medium. Rather, It should contain any of the words mentioned in the regex (.cp.|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)
Since the URL is not satisying the requirement, it will not be categorized as “Paid Social” channel.
How to fix this?
The only solution for this issue is to replace the terms used in utm_medium with any of the words mentioned in the regex.
Instead of giving first-fb-ad, you could add something like cp or ppc or paid or retargeting.
A system-defined source is a traffic source that GA4 already knows and recognizes. Likewise, a system-defined medium is a type of traffic that GA4 already knows and recognizes.Sources that are not in the Google’s known list is called user-defined traffic sources.
Can You Create Custom Channel Groupings in GA4?
Yes. It is possible to create custom channel grouping in GA4 when your traffic source and medium is not matching with the default channel grouping definitions of GA4.
Let’s say, you have a link in the PDF version of your ebook. Definitely, you know the traffic source is eBook and medium is PDF. However, the default settings of GA4 won’t help you to do that.
In such cases, you can create custom Channel Grouping in the GA4. Here’s a good tutorial video, that I would suggest to learn how to create it.
Conclusion
The more you share your links in raw format or with improper UTM links, the numbers in the “Direct” and “Unassigned” channels will increase.
So, whenever you share your website link, make sure you’re following the updated guidelines and best practices as I mentioned in this post.
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Last Updated on January 12, 2024 by Ujesh