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What Are UTM Tags And How To Use Them
Conversion rate per traffic source is an essential indicator for any online store, be it a large marketplace or a small website. Your marketing campaigns, as efficient as they might be, may not always perform at their full potential. Some of your traffic sources or marketing channels drive traffic with high conversion rates and some of them drag everything down. How can you be sure which of your marketing efforts actually bring visitors to your website and convert them into customers?
UTM tags (a.k.a UTM codes or UTM parameters) help you measure the impact of each particular traffic source or marketing channel, and see which advertising campaigns bring you less revenue. If you want to quickly respond to any change in the website traffic and to reallocate your advertising budget, UTM tags are a must have.
Table of contents
What are UTM tags?
To understand how to add UTM tags correctly, you should first understand what UTM tags are, and what they are made of.
UTM tags are small snippets of code you append to the end of your URL. Each tag consists of two parts — a UTM parameter and its value.
For example:
www://example.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=utm_tags,
In this example, utm_source/utm_medium/utm_campaign are UTM parameters, and google/cpc/utm_tags are their values. These particular values can be described as follows:
- google is the advertising system, a source that has brought a user to your website.
- cpcis the type of traffic medium (cost per click).
- utm_tags is the name of the advertising campaign.
UTM parameters are used to sort the data in a web analytics system. They also help to group values or variables that are sent to the system. UTM parameters are invariable and static. On the contrary, values can be set up and changed at your discretion. Please note that each parameters and values are separated by an equal sign (=), and that multiple "parameter=value" pairs are separated by an ampersand (&).
Types of UTM parameters
UTM parameters can be divided into two categories: required and optional:
| UTM parameter | Explanation | Example |
| Required parameters (you should always add them to your URL) | ||
| utm_source | Identifies the website where the traffic is coming from, e.g. an advertising system: Bing Ads Google Adwords Yandex.Direct |
utm_source=bing utm_source=google utm_source=yandex-direct |
| utm_medium | Identifies the type of marketing medium. For example: cpc cpm email campaign |
utm_medium= cpc cost per click utm_medium= cpm cost per mille — a thousand of impressions utm_medium=email |
| utm_campaign | Identifies a specific advertising campaign. For example: Kids toys Kids strollersе |
utm_campaign=kids_toys utm_campaign=kids_strollers |
| Optional parameters (you can use them when necessary) | ||
| utm_term | Identifies the keywords that were paid for in paid keyword campaigns | utm_term=running+shoes utm_term=keyword |
| utm_content | Helps to differentiate links or ads that point to the same URL from the same source, medium and campaign | utm_content=text utm_content=text_2 utm_content=banner |
Dynamic URL parameters
Many advertising systems, including Google Adwords, Bing Ads or Yandex.Direct, provide dynamic URL parameters. By adding dynamic URL parameters to your UTM tags, you enable the advertising system to dynamically insert the information you need into the URLs. Dynamic parameters can be used in a number of ways. For example, they help identify the websites or referrers which bring in the most traffic, or the keywords that triggered those ads which were clicked on. You can also see what sites the ad was clicked on, what type of ad placement was used, etc... Dynamic parameters are enclosed with curly brackets.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the URL parameters in Google Adwords, Bing Ads and Yandex.Direct. You can see the full lists of parameters in your advertising system’s help center.
ValueTrack parameters in Google Adwords
| Google Adwords dynamic parameter | Explanation | Example |
| network | Site type: search or context | g — Google search page s — search partners d — Google Display Network |
| placement | Address of the site where a user clicked on an ad, Display Network-only | http://utmparameters.blogspot.com/ |
| adposition | Position of an ad | 3t2 (3 — page, t — position at the top (top), 2 — place) or none (Display Network) |
| creative | Unique numeric ad ID (to see the ID in AdWords, add the corresponding column in the tab) | 16541940833 |
| matchtype | Keyword match type | e — exact match p — phrase b — broad |
| keyword | The keyword that is matched to the search query (for Search Network) or the content (for Display Network) | toys for kids |
| device | Device type | m — mobile phone, t — tablet c — computer, laptop |
| target | Placement category (only for placement targeting) | Cooking |
| ifsearch:search | Impression on search page | Search |
| ifcontent:content | Impression in Display Network | Content |
| adtype | Ad block type (only for campaigns targeting products) | pla — product listing ads pe — product extensions ads |
| devicemodel | Brand and model of the device. Only available on Display Network campaigns | Apple+iPhone |
| ifmobile:string_text | The custom text you add after the colon is shown if an ad is displayed on a mobile device | Mobile |
URL parameters in Bing Ads
| Bing URL parameter | Explanation | Example |
| campaign | The name of the campaign that triggered the ad | SpringSale |
| adgroup | The name of the ad group that triggered the ad | Discounts |
| matchtype | The match type used to deliver an ad. Helps you determine the match types that get the most clicks | e — exact p — phrase b — broad or expanded |
| network | The Ad network type on which the ad was served | o — owned/operated (Bing and AOL) |
| device | s — syndicated | m — mobile device t — tablet c — desktop or laptop |
| adid | The unique numeric ID of the displayed ad | 1234567 (the Ad ID column is displayed in the table on the Campaigns page) |
| querystring | The search query text entered by the user that has triggered the impression | apartment for rent |
Yandex.Direct's dynamic parameters
| Yandex.Direct dynamic parameter | Explanation | Example |
| source_type | The type of the site where an ad has been displayed | search — search site context — topic-related site |
| source | Display site name | дsite domain (url)— when the ad is displayed in the ad networks none — impression on Yandex search page |
| addphrases | If an impression has been initiated by automatically added phrases (additional relevant phrase or automatically-added related keywords) | yes — impression according to one of the additional phrases no — impression by one of the source phrases |
| position_type | Ad block type, if an ad has been displayed on a Yandex search results page | premium — premium placement; other — block at the bottom; none — block not on a Yandex search page |
| position | The exact position on an ad in a block | 0 — ad displayed in YAN Yandex Advertising Network or other networks |
| keyword | The keyword that has triggered an impression | Keyword text without negative keywords keywords that prevent ads from being displayed by a certain word or phrase |
How to add UTM tags
UTM tags can provide a lot of valuable information about clicks on your ads if you append them correctly. Nobody is immune to making mistakes, and the good news is we’ve prepared a compilation of the most common mistakes in UTM tagging. Just fill in the form, get the checklist, and make sure you’re tagging your URLs the right way.
Another bit of good news is you don’t always have to tag your campaigns manually. There are tools that allow you to easily add the needed UTM parameters to your URLs. We recommend using URL Builder, a special tool provided by Google that helps you generate a correct URL with UTM parameters. This takes two easy steps:
- Enter the full URL of a website or a page where users will follow to;
- Add the parameters and values which will be used in the UTM tag. The list of the parameters according to the system, Google AdWords, Bing Ads or Yandex.Direct is given above.
The URL is updated automatically as you add the parameters. This is very convenient if you need to create many similar URLs.
We recommend using Google Play URL Builder if you need to create URLs to measure Google Play campaigns...
What’s the conclusion?
UTM-tagging is necessary for proper collection of statistics and high-quality analysis. UTM parameters help you identify which of your campaigns generate revenue and which don’t. Just keep in mind that UTM tags should be added strictly by the rules, to ensure that they are 100% effective.