Talk:UTM parameters

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Trivia: Removing these is the responsibility of User:PrimeBOT/Task 17. Wqwt (talk) 03:20, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is utm_id a parameter or not?

"There are five different UTM parameters..."

utm_id
utm_source
utm_medium
utm_campaign
utm_term
utm_content

That doesn't go together, right?

2003:E4:2F4F:1000:29B6:3DE3:3B27:AFB8 (talk) 08:06, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Article Outdated

I started looking into this subject because as referenced in a previous topic, there's some edit warring regarding the list of available parameters. My research led me to conclude that the article is fundamentally outdated and needs to be edited to include modern updates to the UTM system.

The article doesn't make the governance timeline clear. This is the Product Lineage of the software known as "Google Analytics" which spawned the UTM system:

Urchin on Demand (before April 2005), developed by Urchin Software Corp.; introduced UTM parameters; (urchin.js)
Google Analytics (April 2005 - 2012), created from the acquisition of Urchin by Google; same software but rebranded; also called "Google Analytics Classic" (ga.js)
Universal Analytics (2012 - 2023), overhauled the software with a new data model (analytics.js)
Google Analytics 4 aka "GA4" (2020+), another software overhaul, UTM parameters are supported but converted to different tracking dimension names (gtag.js)

There was some overlap in dates to allow for service migration. There is no officially branded "GA2" or "GA3". The product users created their own version nomenclature based on the major version updates listed above. That community nomenclature became adopted by Google by the time GA4 was being announced, so Google just went with it despite the confusing omission of intermediately versioned brandings.

At the time when Universal Analytics was supported, there were five available UTM parameters (source, medium, campaign, term, and content; all prefixed with "utm_"). The release of GA4 added "utm_id" as another supported parameter. "utm_source_platform" is another parameter to be included in the near future.

The article should communicate that the UTM system is being deprecated in favor of GA4's much larger list of standard tracking properties. UTM parameters are only supported by GA4 as a legacy feature. Other tracking software (e.g. Adobe Analytics) may support UTM parameters due to their general ubiquity, but UTM is fundamentally a standard completely controlled by Google.

The article could be further improved with information about privacy-focused efforts to eliminate the functionality of UTM such as autoparsing URLs to strip tracking parameters. The change by Google to update the names of tracking properties (deprecating UTM) represents the progression of the cat-and-mouse game between digital advertisers and privacy enthusiasts. Nom de vileplume (talk) 17:52, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]