UTM & Campaign Links

• 
  The Complete Guide to UTM and Link Tracking

  The complete guide to UTM and link tracking: what UTM parameters are and the five that matter, how link tracking works, and why untagged links quietly lose their credit. Real stakes: email returns about $36 per $1 (Litmus) but only if links are tagged, and up to 60 percent of 'direct' traffic is actually misattributed search (Groupon's 2014 experiment), because referrers vanish in email, messaging apps, and copy-paste. The fix is to put the source inside the link before you share it. Covers UTM anatomy, naming that scales, shorteners, QR codes, attribution, privacy, and per-person links, with a five-minute quickstart.

• 
  Unique Tracking Links: One Link Per Person

  A unique tracking link is a link you give to one person or place, different from every other copy, so a click tells you exactly which one was clicked. A UTM link groups clicks by channel; a unique link keeps individuals apart, down to a single recipient. It answers the question a shared link cannot: did this specific person engage. The privacy-safe way is a random token only your system can map to a person, never their email or name in the URL.

• 
  What Makes a Link Trackable

  A trackable link is an ordinary link carrying extra readable information, usually UTM tags, that the destination can log. Plain links report nothing. Trackable links come in three levels: channel (UTM tags tell you the source, like Reddit), individual link (a unique link per share), and person (a link issued to one individual tells you who clicked). You make a link trackable by tagging it or issuing a unique one before you share it, never after.

• 
  UTM Parameters for Email and Newsletters

  For email and newsletter links, always set the medium to email. The most common mistake is using newsletter as the medium, which Google does not recognise, so the traffic disappears into an Unassigned bucket. Newsletter is fine as the source. Watch for your email tool auto-adding its own tags on top of yours, keep long links tidy with a shortener that passes the tags through, and never put a recipient's email address in the link, since it leaks and hurts deliverability. Use a revocable per-person token instead.

• 
  Should You Put UTM Tags on Internal Links?

  Do not put UTM tags on links between your own pages. UTMs are for traffic arriving from somewhere else, and on an internal link they corrupt the attribution of a visitor you already had. In GA4 the stale tag gets inherited by that person's next visit; older guides say it starts a new session, but that describes Universal Analytics, retired in 2023. To see how people move around your site, use analytics events or a per-person path view, not UTMs.

• 
  Where to Find Your UTM Data in Google Analytics

  Your UTM data lives in one Google Analytics report: Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. It opens grouped by broad channels, so switch the dimension to Session source / medium to see your actual source and medium, or Session campaign for your campaign. utm_content and utm_term are not in the standard reports at all; you have to build an Exploration to see them. And if you see nothing, it is usually just too soon, since standard reports can lag a day or two while the Realtime report updates fast.

• 
  Tracking URL Examples for Reddit, X, Email and More

  A tracking URL is your normal link with labels like utm_source and utm_medium on the end. The source is the place you posted it, named however you like. The medium is the channel type, and it must match a value Google recognises, so use social for organic Reddit, X and LinkedIn, referral for Product Hunt and Hacker News, email for newsletters, and paid_social for ads. Made-up values like community send your traffic to a bucket called Unassigned, where it vanishes from your reports.

• 
  What a UTM Tracking Code Is and How It Works

  A UTM tracking code is not code and needs no developer. It is just text added to the end of a web address, like a label saying where a visitor came from. When someone clicks, the page loads normally and the analytics already on the destination site reads those labels and files them. The credit lasts a 30-minute session, and a later signup can still be traced back for 30 to 90 days. If you see six months quoted, that is the old Universal Analytics figure, not the current one.