Objective

Understand what are UTM tags and how to properly implement them.

Table of Contents

Related Resources

• Google Analytics - Campaign URL builder
• Honlini - Definitive guide to UTM parameters
• Autopilot - Explanation of UTM parameters
• Karooya - List of all ValueTrack parameters
• FreeCodeCamp - URL encoding parameters
• Dan's Tools - URL encode/decode
• Terminus - The ultimate UTM Builder

<aside> 💡 This guide is meant to provide basic knowledge on a complex topic in the most concise manner. Never take anything as the gospel truth, read from multiple sources before acting.

</aside>

URL syntax & encoding

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URL generic syntax

Every URL conforms to a generic syntax that consists of a hierarchical sequence of 5 components:

URI = scheme:[//authority]path[?querystring][#fragment]

URL = protocol:[//hostname]/path/filename[?querystring][fragment]

URL allowed characters

A URL is composed from a limited set of characters belonging to the US-ASCII character set. These characters include:

• Digits: 0-9
• Letters: A-Z, a-z
• A few special characters: -, ., _, ~

URL restricted characters

Some characters are not allowed to be placed directly within URLs:

• Non-ASCII characters
• ASCII control character: |(vertical tab), ― (horizontal tab), ␈ (backspace), ␊ (line feed)
• Unsafe character: space, \\, <, >, {, }
• Reserved characters (that have special meanings within URLs): ?, /, #, : , &, @, %, +

URL encoding

URL Encoding converts reserved, unsafe, and non-ASCII characters in URLs to a format that is universally accepted and understood by all web browsers and servers:

1. It first converts the character to one or more bytes.
2. Then each byte is represented by two hexadecimal digits preceded by a percent sign (%) - (e.g. %xy). The percent sign is used as an escape character

• Encoding table
• Example

→ Online encoding tool

UTM definition

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Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are 5 variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media. They were introduced by Google Analytics' predecessor Urchin and, consequently, are supported out-of-the-box by Google Analytics.

URL parameters are made of a key and a value separated by an equals sign (=) and joined by an ampersand (&). The first parameter always comes after a question mark in a URL. For example, http://example.com?product=1234&utm_source=google