UTM Builder

Tag campaign links so analytics knows where visits came from

UTM Builder adds the standard campaign parameters — utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content and utm_id — to any web address, so analytics tools such as Google Analytics can attribute visits to the newsletter, ad or post that sent them.

It also works the other way round: paste a tagged link into Parse a link to see its UTM values decoded, its other parameters, and a clean version without the tracking tags. Everything happens in your browser.

How to build a UTM link

1. Enter the Website URL of the page people should land on. If you leave out https://, it is added for you and a note says so.
2. Click a quick-fill button such as Newsletter or Google Ads to set the source and medium, or type your own.
3. Fill in the Campaign name. Source, medium and campaign are required; term, content and ID are optional.
4. If a warning about capital letters or spaces appears, click Lowercase & use hyphens to tidy every value at once.
5. Click Copy URL and use the link in your email, ad or post.

How the finished link is put together

• Your link stays intact: existing query parameters keep their order and encoding, and a #fragment stays at the end, after the UTM parameters.
• No duplicates: if the link already has a utm_ parameter you fill in, the old value is replaced and a note tells you.
• Encoding: values are encoded with encodeURIComponent, so a space becomes %20 and characters such as & or # can’t break the link.
• International domains: a domain with accented letters is written in its ASCII (punycode) form, which works in every browser and email client.
• Fixed order: parameters are added as source, medium, campaign, term, content, ID; empty ones are skipped.

Where campaign links help

• Email newsletters: see how many visits and sign-ups each issue brings.
• Social posts and ads: tell organic posts from paid ones with mediums such as social and paid-social.
• Print and QR codes: tag the link before turning it into a code with the QR Code Generator.
• Cleaning shared links: strip tracking parameters before posting a link elsewhere.

Naming conventions that keep reports tidy

• Analytics tools treat “Facebook” and “facebook” as two different sources, so stick to lowercase.
• Use hyphens instead of spaces; spaces become %20 in the link and are easy to mistype.
• Agree a short list of mediums (cpc, email, social, paid-social, print) and reuse them, so channels group correctly.
• Don’t add UTM parameters to links between pages of your own site — analytics would then credit the visit to that internal link instead of where the visitor really came from.

What each UTM parameter means

Source, medium and campaign

Source is who sent the visitor (google, newsletter), medium is the kind of channel (cpc, email, social) and campaign is the promotion itself (spring-sale). Together they answer where, how and why, which is why all three are treated as required.

Term, content and ID

Term records the paid search keyword, content tells apart two links in the same message (header-button vs footer-link), and ID matches the link to a campaign defined in your ad or analytics platform. They are optional; leave them empty if you don’t need them.

UTM Builder: common questions