18 Apr Google UTM’s – Everything you need to know
Updated 28 Sep 2023
Why We Use Google’s UTMs (Urchin Tracking Module)?
To track the source & campaign of website visits with Google Analytics. In other words, it helps us how we determine how many visits came from Facebook/Instagram/Emailers/or any other source and how a particular campaign worked in contributing to traffic. In most cases, if Google can’t see where the traffic is from, it will bulk the traffic into the “Direct” default channel. Correct attribution of traffic is VITAL be able to provide accurate reports and know which channel is giving the best inbound traffic.
Every webshare, bitly, emailer or other type of content used to drive website traffic, should use a UTM. We only use UTMs when we have access to the website that we want to track (ie it’s pointless adding a UTM if the landing page isn’t our own website or digital asset with our Google Analytics tracking in it).
Every webshare, bitly, emailer or other type of content used to drive website traffic, should use a UTM. We only use UTMs when we have access to the website that we want to track (ie it’s pointless adding a UTM if the landing page isn’t our own website or digital asset with our Google Analytics tracking in it).
How To Set a UTM Up
You can use this nifty UTM builder here: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Terms You Need To Know
- URL – The url of the page you’re sending people to.
- Source – The platform the click comes from, to the website eg. Facebook, Emailer, Twitter, IG, GmyB etc. Generally mailing platforms create their own UTMs.
- Medium – The channel used to generate the click eg. social, paid_social, email, referral, google, etc. Google creates their own UTMs.
- Campaign Name – The name should differentiate all of your individual posts or campaigns
- Campaign Content (optional) – The title of the post eg. fathers-day-competition (often included in the campaign name)
- Bitly – a shortener for the long URL to short, easy to use, link
Things To Remember
- Don’t use any spaces, special characters (google+ = googleplus) – these will be replaced with other characters by Google & can make things very hard to read. NO spaces, use _ or – instead.
- For Facebook posts, Twitter, Instagram or Google My Business (where the full URL is visible to the user) they will need to be converted by Bitly (all Bitlys need to be labelled correctly).
- When setting up UTMs make sure that Medium = social if it is an organic post
Make sure the “S” is lowercase - When tracking other platforms with a post that’s being used across multiple other channels (Twitter, Google My Business, LinkedIn) use Other as the Medium
- Don’t forget to create a bitly for each UTM. Or, if you’re using software to post (like Hootsuite)… it will create a Shortener for you (and the UTM if set up correctly).
A separate UTM always needs to be created for Facebook posts
- Source: facebook (always – lowercase)
- Medium: social (always – lowercase)
- Campaign Name: The name should differentiate all of your individual posts or campaigns (the name should change depending on the execution/description you want to include for later reference)
(Note: if the post will be advertised, use paid_social as the medium)
A separate UTM always needs to be created for Facebook adverts
- Source: facebook (always – lowercase)
- Medium: paid_social (always – lowercase)
- Campaign Name: The name should differentiate all of your individual posts or campaigns (the name should change depending on execution/description you want to include for later reference)
A UTM needs to be created for other (IG, TW, GmyB, Li, etc)
- Source: other (always – lowercase)
- Medium: social (always – lowercase)
How to set up a Facebook UTM