UTM builder

Paste a page address, name the source, medium and campaign, and the tagged link is built as you type, with a preview of exactly what Google Analytics will report it as. Copy it and use it.

Under the builder: what each parameter is for, the conventions that keep a report readable a year later, examples per channel, the mistakes that split one campaign into six rows, and how to tag the link on a listing here so the board shows up by name in your analytics.

Page addressThe page the link should open. Existing UTM tags on it are replaced.

Fill in for

utm_source requiredWhere the link is placed: the site, platform or list.utm_medium requiredThe kind of channel: social, email, cpc, referral.utm_campaign requiredThe effort this link belongs to. Name it so it means something next year.utm_termThe keyword on paid search, or the audience elsewhere.utm_contentWhich link, when one campaign has several.

House rules Lowercase everything Spaces to hyphensBoth on by default. Switch them off only if a report already uses the other spelling.

The tagged linkFill in the address and the three required fields.

Paste the page address the link should open.

What GA4 will show

Session source / medium: (not set) / (none)
Session campaign: (not set)
Default channel group: Unassignedno medium, so nothing to group by

What UTM parameters are

UTM parameters are five optional fields on the end of a web address that tell your analytics where a visit came from. They are read by Google Analytics and by nearly everything else, and they are the only way to know that a visit came from the newsletter rather than the newsletter's platform, or from the June campaign rather than from Facebook in general.

They do nothing to the page. A visitor who clicks a tagged link lands on the same page as one who did not; the parameters ride along in the address, the analytics script reads them on arrival, and the visit is filed under the source, medium and campaign they name.

The five parameters

Parameter	What it answers	Example	Required
utm_source	Where the link was placed: the site, the platform, the list	facebook, newsletter, toptheboard.com	Yes
utm_medium	What kind of channel it was	social, email, cpc, referral	Yes
utm_campaign	Which effort this link belongs to	spring-launch, black-friday-2026	Yes
utm_term	The keyword, on paid search; a segment or an audience elsewhere	running+shoes, founders	No
utm_content	Which link, when one campaign has several	header-button, footer-text, image-a	No

Source, medium and campaign are the three every tagged link should carry, and Google Analytics files the visit as unassigned when the medium is missing. Term and content are for telling two links in the same campaign apart.

The conventions that keep reports clean

Lowercase everything. Facebook and facebook are two sources in every report you will ever run. The builder lowercases by default.
No spaces. A space becomes %20 in the address and a separate row in the report; use a hyphen or an underscore, and use the same one every time.
Use the medium names analytics expects. Google Analytics groups traffic into channels by medium: cpc, ppc and paidsearch land in Paid Search; social lands in Organic Social; email lands in Email; referral in Referral. A medium of facebook lands in Unassigned.
Name the platform in the source, not the medium. Source facebook, medium social. Source facebook, medium facebook tells the report nothing twice.
Keep a sheet. Every tagged link you make, in one place, with the date and where it went, so the campaign name means the same thing in March that it meant in January.
Never tag internal links. A tagged link from your own home page to your own pricing page restarts the session with a new source and erases the one that brought the visitor.

What GA4 shows

Google Analytics 4 reports a tagged visit under three dimensions in the acquisition reports: session source, session medium and session campaign, usually shown together as source / medium. The preview under the builder shows exactly those three as GA4 will display them, so a link is checked before it is sent rather than a week after.

GA4 also sorts every session into a default channel group by its medium, which is why the medium names above matter: a link tagged with the wrong medium is not lost, but it is filed under Unassigned, where nobody looks.

Examples per channel

Where the link goes	utm_source	utm_medium	utm_campaign	utm_content
A Facebook post	facebook	social	spring-launch	post-1
A post on X	x	social	spring-launch	thread
A LinkedIn post	linkedin	social	spring-launch
A newsletter	newsletter	email	issue-42	top-button
A Google Ads campaign	google	cpc	brand-terms	headline-a
A guest post	partner-blog	referral	guest-post-june
Your listing on The Board	toptheboard.com	referral	the-board

The presets under the builder fill these in with one click and leave the campaign name to you. Google Ads can tag its own links automatically; if you use the builder for it as well, keep the two from disagreeing by using the same campaign names in both.

The mistakes that break a report

Mixed case and spelling, which splits one source into several rows.
A medium the channel grouping does not know, which files the visit as Unassigned.
Tagging a link that goes through a redirect that drops the query string. Test the final address, not the one you pasted.
Two question marks. A page address that already carries parameters needs the tags joined with an ampersand, which the builder handles; done by hand it is the most common broken link there is.
Tagging internal links, which overwrites the real source with a made-up one.
A campaign name that means nothing later. Use the date or the name of the thing, not a code.

Tagging the link on your listing here

A listing on The Board carries one link, to your site, and every click on it goes out through the board's own redirect and fires an event in Fathom. To see the board by name in your own analytics as well, tag the address on the listing: source toptheboard.com, medium referral, campaign whatever you call the position. The preset under the builder fills it in.

The listing's link is free to change at any time, from the listing's own menu, and changing it never touches what the listing paid or where it ranks.

Questions people ask about a utm builder

What are UTM parameters?

Five optional fields on the end of a web address, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term and utm_content, that tell your analytics where a visit came from. They change nothing on the page.

Which UTM parameters are required?

Source, medium and campaign. Google Analytics files a visit without a medium as Unassigned. Term and content are optional and tell two links in the same campaign apart.

What is the difference between utm_source and utm_medium?

Source is where the link was placed: facebook, newsletter, a partner's site. Medium is the kind of channel: social, email, cpc, referral. Source names the place; medium names the type.

Should UTM parameters be lowercase?

Yes. Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as two different sources, and a report with both is a report that has to be cleaned before it can be read.

Do UTM parameters affect SEO?

Not when they are used on links from other sites, which is what they are for. Tagging internal links can create duplicate addresses for one page and resets the visitor's session; do not do it.

How do I see UTM data in GA4?

In the acquisition reports, under traffic acquisition, as session source, session medium and session campaign. The preview under the builder shows a link as those three dimensions before it is sent.

Can I use UTM parameters on The Board?

Yes. Tag the address on your listing with source toptheboard.com, medium referral and a campaign name, and every click from the board shows in your analytics under that name. The board counts the same clicks on the listing and in Fathom.

What happens if my URL already has a question mark?

The parameters have to be joined with an ampersand instead of a second question mark. The builder does this for you; two question marks in one address is the most common broken campaign link.

More free tools

OGCheckerLink preview checkerHow a link unfurls on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack and Google, with what is missing.CTRCalculatorCTR calculatorClick rate from impressions and clicks, with benchmarks and the board's own live rate.CPCCalculatorCPC calculatorSpend, clicks or cost per click from the other two, with benchmarks by channel.

All of them are on the free tools page. Every one is free, asks for no account, and stores nothing of yours on our side. A listing on The Board is a logo, a line and a link, from $1, and every number on the board is public.