- What are UTM parameters?
- UTM parameters are tags you add to a URL so your analytics platform (like Google Analytics) can identify where traffic came from. There are five standard parameters: utm_source (who sent the traffic), utm_medium (the channel type), utm_campaign (the campaign name), utm_term (paid search keyword), and utm_content (for A/B testing).
- Which UTM parameters are required?
- utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign are the three required parameters. utm_term and utm_content are optional — utm_term is mainly used for paid search campaigns, and utm_content is used when you have multiple links in the same campaign and want to distinguish between them.
- Does it matter what values I use?
- Yes — consistency matters. Google Analytics treats 'Email', 'email', and 'EMAIL' as three separate sources. Pick a convention (lowercase with underscores or hyphens is standard) and stick to it across your team. Common medium values are cpc, email, social, organic, and referral.
- Will UTM parameters affect my SEO?
- UTM parameters don't directly harm SEO, but you should avoid letting UTM-tagged URLs get indexed by search engines. Use canonical tags to point to the clean URL, and add UTM parameter patterns to your robots.txt or Google Search Console URL parameter settings.
