UTM parameters

UTM parameters (UTM) is a shortcut for Urchin Traffic Monitor. This text tags allow users to track and analyze traffic sources in analytical tools (f.e. Google Analytics). By adding UTM parameters to URLs, you can identify the source and campaigns that send traffic to your website. When a user clicks a referral link / ad or banner, these parameters are sent to Google Analytics (or other analytical tool), so you can see the effectiveness of each campaign in your reports.^[1]

Example

Here is example of UTM parameter: www.wikipedia.org/?utm_source=domain.com&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=winter15&utm_content=blue_ad&utm_term=headline_v1

The parameter is added to URL with "?".

Dimensions

There are 5 dimensions of UTM parameters:

utm_source = name of the source (usually the domain of source website)
utm_medium = name of the medium; type of traffic (f.e. cpc = paid search, organic = organic search; referral = link from another website etc.)
utm_campaign = name of the campaign, f.e. name of the campaign in Google AdWords, date of your e-mail campaign, etc.
utm_content = to distinguish different parts of one campaign; f.e. name of AdGroup in Google AdWords (with auto-tagging you will see the headline of - your ads in this dimension)
utm_term = to distinguish different parts of one content; f.e.keyword in Google AdWords^[2]

Tools

You can use several URL builder tools which help you with UTM parameters. For example:

Referrences

[1] "Custom campaigns".

[2] "UTM parameters – measure as much as you can".

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[2]