Google UTM’s – Everything you need to know

Google UTM Builder

18 Apr Google UTM’s – Everything you need to know

Posted at 20:53h in Online Marketing Strategy, Social Media by

Updated 20 March 2026

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 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. Accurate attribution of traffic is VITAL to be able to provide insightful reports and assess which channel is driving the best traffic. 

Every post, ad, 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 (i.e. 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 link of the page you’re sending people to.
  • Source – The platform the click comes from, to the website eg. Facebook, Emailer, X, 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 – Transforming long, complex URLs into short manageable links.

 

Things To Remember

  • Don’t use any special characters (google+ = googleplus) – these will be replaced with other characters by Google & can make things very hard to read.
  • For Facebook posts, X, Instagram or Google My Business (where the full URL is visible to the user) links will need to be converted by URL shortener.
  • When setting up your UTMs, consistency is king. Whether you choose ‘social’ or ‘Social’ for your medium, stick to either lowercase or uppercase. Mixing cases will split your data into two different rows in your reports. 
  • 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
  • Medium: social
  • 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
  • Medium: paid_social
  • 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, X, GmyB, Li, etc)

  • Source: other
  • Medium: social

How to set up a Facebook UTM

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