UTM Builder

A UTM builder adds tracking tags to a link so that Google Analytics 4 can tell you exactly where each visit came from. Our free tool takes your website URL and adds utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and, if you want them, utm_term, utm_content and utm_id. One-click presets fill in sensible values for newsletters, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, manually tagged Google Ads and QR codes or print. Values are cleaned to lower case with hyphens, you are warned about missing fields, and the finished link is ready to copy or turn into a QR code. It all runs in your browser.

How to use the UTM builder

1. 1 Enter the page addressPaste the full URL of the page visitors should land on, starting with https://. Any existing query string is kept.
2. 2 Pick a preset or fill in source and mediumClick Newsletter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Ads or QR code / print, or type your own utm_source and utm_medium.
3. 3 Name the campaignAdd a short utm_campaign such as autumn-sale-2026 or october-newsletter, using the same naming style every time.
4. 4 Add optional detailUse utm_content to tell apart two links in the same email or ad, utm_term for a keyword, and utm_id if you track campaigns by ID.
5. 5 Copy and use the linkCopy the final URL into your email, post or ad, or click through to the QR code generator to print it. Test it once before sending.

What UTM parameters are

UTM parameters are labels added to the end of a URL after a question mark, such as ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=autumn-sale. They do not change the page the visitor sees. When someone clicks the link, Google Analytics reads the labels and records the visit against that source, medium and campaign, instead of guessing.

Without tags, many visits arrive with little or no information. Clicks from email apps, PDFs, messaging apps and some social apps often show up as direct traffic, and printed material cannot pass a referrer at all. Tagging the links you control is the simplest way to see which newsletter, post or leaflet actually brought people to your site.

Some email platforms, such as Mailchimp, can add UTM tags to links automatically, and many social scheduling tools offer the same. Check what your tools already do before tagging by hand, so you do not end up with two sets of parameters. If you build links yourself, this builder gives you the same structure every time, which is what keeps reports comparable from one month to the next.

The five main UTM fields explained

Each field answers a different question about the visit. Source and medium matter most, because GA4 uses them to place visits into its default channel groups, such as Email, Organic Social and Paid Search.

• utm_source: who sent the visit, for example newsletter, facebook, linkedin or the name of a partner site.
• utm_medium: the type of channel, for example email, social, paid-social, cpc, display, referral, affiliate, print or sms.
• utm_campaign: the promotion, launch or issue, for example black-friday-2026 or spring-menu.
• utm_term: the paid keyword or audience, mainly for manually tagged search ads.
• utm_content: which link or creative was clicked, for example header-button versus footer-link, or video-ad versus image-ad.
• utm_id: an optional campaign ID, useful if you import cost data into GA4 or track campaigns in a spreadsheet by number.

Choosing values that GA4 groups correctly

GA4 assigns each visit to a default channel using rules based mainly on the medium, and in some cases the source. Using conventional mediums keeps your reports tidy: email for newsletters, social for unpaid posts, paid-social or cpc for paid ads, referral for links on other websites and affiliate for affiliate links. Google publishes its default channel group rules in the Analytics Help Centre, and it is worth checking them if a campaign lands in Unassigned.

For QR codes and printed material there is no single standard medium. The builder's preset uses utm_source=qr and utm_medium=print, which is easy to recognise in reports even though GA4 will not put it into a named default channel. Whatever you choose, use the same values every time so results build up in one place.

If you want print and QR visits to sit in a named channel, GA4 lets administrators create custom channel groups, for example a group called Offline that matches the medium print. That is optional, and the raw source and medium values remain available in every acquisition report either way.

Naming conventions that keep reports clean

Analytics treats every different spelling as a different value. Facebook, facebook, FB and fb.com will appear as four separate sources, splitting your figures. The builder's clean values option converts everything to lower case and replaces spaces with hyphens, and warns you if capitals or spaces would otherwise slip through.

Agree a short naming guide and keep it somewhere the whole team can see, such as a shared spreadsheet listing each campaign, its source, medium and full tagged URL. Decide on a pattern for campaign names, for example topic-month-year, so you can sort and filter them later. A little discipline at the start saves hours of cleaning up reports.

Avoid putting personal information in UTM values, such as a customer's name or email address. Google Analytics policies do not allow personally identifiable information to be sent to Analytics, and URLs are often visible to others and stored in browser histories. Use campaign and placement names only.

Google Ads, social platforms and auto-tagging

If your Google Ads account is linked to GA4, auto-tagging adds a gclid parameter to ad clicks and passes detailed campaign data automatically. In that case you usually do not need manual UTM tags on Google Ads, and Google recommends keeping auto-tagging on. The Google Ads preset in this builder is for situations where you have chosen manual tagging, or where the accounts are not linked.

Meta, LinkedIn and other ad platforms let you add URL parameters in the ad settings, and some offer dynamic placeholders that fill in the campaign or ad name. For unpaid posts, add the tags yourself. Long tagged URLs look untidy in a post, so many people use a link-in-bio page or a short page on their own domain that redirects to the tagged URL.

Where not to use UTM tags

Only tag links that point to your site from somewhere else. Never add UTM tags to links between pages on your own website, such as a banner on the home page linking to an offer. GA4 records a click on an internally tagged link as a new campaign touchpoint, so sales and enquiries that really came from Google search or a newsletter can end up credited to your own banner, and your reports become unreliable.

Tagged URLs can also be indexed if they are linked publicly. Make sure your pages have a canonical tag pointing to the clean URL, which most CMSs and SEO plugins add automatically, so search engines treat the tagged versions as the same page. You can check this with our Meta Tag Checker.

Examples you can copy

https://www.example.co.uk/offers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=october-2026&utm_content=main-button

https://www.example.co.uk/spring-menu/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring-menu&utm_content=bio-link
https://www.example.co.uk/spring-menu/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring-menu&utm_content=story-link

https://www.example.co.uk/menu/?utm_source=qr&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=autumn-menu&utm_content=table-card
https://www.example.co.uk/menu/?utm_source=qr&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=autumn-menu&utm_content=shop-window

Common mistakes to avoid

Frequently asked questions