UTM Builder for Google Ads, Meta and affiliate links

What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of a link to say where the visit came from. When someone clicks yourdomain.com/offer?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc, Google Analytics records that the visit came from Google, through a paid ad.

The name comes from Urchin Tracking Module, the tool Google bought in 2005 that became Google Analytics. The format stuck: today almost every analytics tool, CRM and sales tracker reads UTMs.

Without UTMs, every click from ads, posts and emails lands in the same bucket. With them, you see which campaign brought the visit and, matched with sales, which one makes a profit and which only burns your ad spend.

The 5 UTM parameters

utm_source: who sent the visit

The source site or tool: google, facebook, tiktok, newsletter, whatsapp. Required.

utm_medium: the type of traffic

How the visit arrived: cpc (pay-per-click ad), paid_social (social media ad), email, social (organic post). Required. Google Analytics reads source and medium together to sort channels: google + cpc becomes Paid Search, facebook + paid_social becomes Paid Social.

utm_campaign: which campaign

The campaign name or ID: black-friday, product-x-us. In ads, use the dynamic parameter ({campaignid} on Google, {{campaign.name}} on Meta) so you don't need one link per campaign.

utm_term: the keyword

Optional. On Google Search, the keyword that triggered the ad ({keyword}). On social, many people use it for the audience or ad set.

utm_content: the ad or variation

Optional. Tells apart ads in the same campaign or two buttons on the same page: testimonial-video, top-banner.

Source vs. medium: the source says who (google, facebook) and the medium says how (cpc, email). The same Google can send paid (cpc) and organic (organic) visits; that's why both exist.

GA4 also accepts utm_id (campaign ID), utm_source_platform, utm_creative_format and utm_marketing_tactic. Use them if you need to, through the extra parameter field.

UTM link example

A Google Ads link with dynamic parameters looks like this:

https://yourdomain.com/offer?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_term={keyword}&utm_content={creative}

The first parameter follows the ? and the next ones follow &. Order doesn't matter. If the link already has a ?, new ones go in with &, and the builder handles that for you.

How to see UTMs in Google Analytics 4

In GA4, open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and switch the primary dimension to Session source / medium or Session campaign. Each UTM combination becomes a row, with sessions, engagement and conversions.

GA4 is case-sensitive: Facebook and facebook show up as two sources. That's why the checker warns you whenever a UTM value has an uppercase letter.

UTMs in Google Ads: auto-tagging, gclid and ValueTrack

With auto-tagging on (the default), Google Ads adds a gclid to every click. The gclid is that click's unique ID: with it, linked Google Analytics knows the campaign, and a conversion can be credited to the exact click.

UTMs are still useful for everything that doesn't read the gclid: your affiliate network, CRM, trackers and other analytics tools. The right place for them is the Final URL suffix, under Campaign settings → Campaign URL options. The ad's final URL stays clean, and the suffix applies to every ad in the campaign.

Values in braces are ValueTrack: Google replaces {campaignid} with the campaign ID, {keyword} with the keyword and {device} with the device, at click time. The table below lists the most used ones.

The Tracking template is something else: it's for tracking tools that receive the click and redirect to the page. It must contain {lpurl}, which Google replaces with the final URL. If you don't use one of those tools, stick with the suffix.

UTMs in Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)

In Meta, UTMs go in the URL parameters field, in each ad's Tracking section, not in the website URL. Dynamic parameters use double braces:

• {{campaign.name}}: campaign name
• {{adset.name}}: ad set name
• {{ad.name}}: ad name
• {{site_source_name}}: where it showed (fb, ig, msg, an)
• {{placement}}: placement (feed, stories, reels)

Meta adds the fbclid on its own, just like Google does with the gclid. Never type an fbclid into a link.

TikTok Ads works the same way, with macros between underscores: __CAMPAIGN_NAME__, __AID_NAME__ (ad group) and __CID_NAME__ (ad). The click gets a ttclid.

UTMs and gclid on affiliate links

Most affiliate networks don't show UTMs in their sales report. Each one has its own tracking field: tid on ClickBank, sck on Hotmart, sub2 on Dr.Cash, cid on Digistore24. Whatever you put in that field shows up on every sale and is sent in the postback.

To know which click made the sale, put the Google click ID in that field. When the ad goes straight to the affiliate link, the final URL suffix does it: tid={gclid} on ClickBank, for example. The Affiliate link tab builds this for 32 networks, with the free sub IDs for campaign and keyword.

When the ad goes to a presell, the gclid lands on the presell, not on the network. Then the presell button has to read the gclid from the URL and pass it to the offer link, or the sale arrives without the click.

UTM naming convention

UTMs only help when everyone writes them the same way. A simple convention covers almost everything:

• All lowercase: facebook, never Facebook.
• No accents, no spaces: xmas-sale, not Xmas Sale.
• Hyphens between words, underscores only where GA4's standard uses them (paid_social).
• Same source for the same place: pick facebook or fb and never mix them.
• General to specific in the campaign: product-country-goal, like collagen-us-sales.
• Write the convention down in a spreadsheet the whole team uses.

Mistakes that break tracking

All of these go unnoticed, because the link opens normally. What disappears is where the visit came from:

• # before ?: everything after # stays in the browser and never reaches Analytics.
• Two ? in the same link: from the second on, parameters get lost.
• Repeated parameter: each tool reads a different one, and reports don't match.
• gclid or fbclid typed by hand: every visit becomes a single click.
• Encoded macro (%7Bcampaignid%7D): the ad platform doesn't recognize it and the text arrives as is.
• Uppercase, accents and spaces: the same campaign splits into several rows.
• UTMs on internal links of your own site: the visit is recounted with the wrong source. Use UTMs only on links coming from outside.

To check a finished link, paste it into the Check a link tab.

UTMs show the click. The sale happens somewhere else.

A UTM tells you where the visit came from, but an affiliate sale happens on the network's checkout, outside your site. Google Analytics sees the click; Google Ads alone doesn't know which click bought.

Without that, Google optimizes for clicks and visits, not buyers. A campaign only learns to find people who buy when each affiliate sale is tied to the gclid of the click that made it.