A UTM parameter is a query-string tag appended to a URL that survives the click and shows up in Google Analytics, Plausible, or whatever else reads the landing page’s referrer data. Nothing about the destination page changes — the tags are read by analytics tools, not by the page itself. Five parameters cover essentially every use case; the builder above only asks for what matters.

The five parameters

https://example.com/pricing
  ?utm_source=newsletter
  &utm_medium=email
  &utm_campaign=spring-launch
  &utm_term=running-shoes
  &utm_content=header-link

• utm_source — where the click came from: newsletter, google, twitter. Required.
• utm_medium — the channel type: email, cpc, social, referral. Required — this is what groups many sources into one channel in a report.
• utm_campaign — the specific effort this link belongs to: spring-launch, black-friday-2026. Optional but almost always worth setting, or every link from an effort reports as one undifferentiated row.
• utm_term — historically for paid search keywords; now also used to distinguish audience segments in a campaign. Optional, rarely needed outside paid search.
• utm_content — distinguishes near-identical links to the same page, like two buttons in the same email. Optional, useful for A/B testing which link gets clicked.

Why the checker warns about spaces and capitals

Google Analytics treats utm_source=Newsletter and utm_source=newsletteras two different values — the traffic doesn’t merge, it silently splits into two rows, and a month later nobody remembers why “Newsletter” and “newsletter” are separate lines with half the numbers each. The fix is a house convention: lowercase, dashes instead of spaces, applied every time. A space in a value also gets URL-encoded (as %20 or +) the moment the link is shared anywhere, which is its own way of making reports harder to read even before the casing issue.

Frequently asked

Do UTM parameters affect SEO?

Not directly, but a tagged URL is technically a different URL than the untagged one. If it ever gets indexed or linked to on its own, it can compete with the canonical version for the same content — set a self-referencing canonical tag on the destination page and this stops mattering.

Should I tag internal links between my own pages?

No — UTM tags are for tracking where a visitor came from before they reached your site. Tagging your own internal navigation overwrites the original source in most analytics setups, making a visitor who arrived from an ad look like they arrived from wherever they clicked next on your own site.

What’s the difference between utm_medium and utm_source?

Source is the specific place — facebook, newsletter-jan. Medium is the category it belongs to — social, email. Several sources can share one medium: facebook and twitter are both social.