Blog

• 
  Analytics Basics What Does UTM Stand For? The Urchin Story

  UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was a web analytics company that Google bought in 2005 and turned into Google Analytics. The company is long gone, but its initials survive on every tagged link and in Google Analytics' old tracking cookies. Knowing this mostly does one useful thing: it stops the letters looking technical, so you can focus on the part that actually matters, choosing a medium value Google recognises.

• 
  UTM & Campaign Links 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.

• 
  UTM & Campaign Links 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.

• 
  Analytics Basics utm_source vs utm_medium vs utm_campaign vs utm_content

  Four UTM parameters, four jobs. utm_source is the specific place a click came from, like reddit. utm_medium is what kind of place that is, like social. utm_campaign is the push it belongs to, like launch_week. utm_content separates two links inside that same push. Three of the four are yours to name freely. Medium is the exception: Google matches it against a fixed list to decide which channel your visit belongs to, and an invented value quietly lands in a bucket called Unassigned.

• 
  Analytics Basics What Are UTM Parameters? A Plain-English Guide

  A UTM parameter is a short label you add to the end of a link so your analytics can tell you where each visitor came from. The page they land on does not change. It matters because links shared in places like Slack, WhatsApp and Discord usually arrive with no source at all, so without a tag you cannot tell which community sent you the people who signed up. If you only ever use one label, use utm_source.