The five common fields
In plain English: Source, medium and campaign form the core; term and content add optional detail.
utm_source identifies the sender or platform. utm_medium describes the channel method. utm_campaign groups the promotion. utm_term can identify a paid keyword, while utm_content distinguishes creative or link variants.
- utm_source=newsletter
- utm_medium=email
- utm_campaign=summer_launch
A complete example
In plain English: The parameters belong on the external campaign destination.
A newsletter link might become https://example.com/pricing?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer_launch. GA4 can expose the values through session acquisition dimensions.
Keep in mind: Google currently also documents campaign ID and source-platform parameters; use the fields your measurement plan genuinely needs.
Naming discipline
In plain English: Values are case-sensitive, so one convention prevents fragmented rows.
Choose lowercase values, documented medium names and campaign labels that another person can understand. summer_launch and SummerLaunch can appear separately.
- Good: newsletter / email / summer_launch
- Weak: nl / stuff / test2
Common mistakes
In plain English: UTMs describe external acquisition, not internal navigation.
Do not add UTMs to internal links: they can overwrite acquisition context and create misleading sessions or campaigns. Avoid spaces, inconsistent capitalisation, missing core fields and arbitrary medium values.
- Keep existing destination query parameters.
- Place the query string before any URL fragment.