UTM naming convention
Most broken campaign reporting is not a tracking problem — it is a spelling problem. Here is a naming convention you can adopt today, with the rules, the vocabulary and the examples.
Why a convention matters more than the tool
Any tool can build a tagged URL. What ruins campaign reporting is thirty variations of the same campaign spread across your analytics because three people spelled it differently over six months.
A naming convention is simply a written set of rules everyone follows. It takes ten minutes to define and saves every future report.
The five rules
- Lowercase, always. Analytics treats casing as meaningful; humans do not.
- One separator. Use underscores between words and never mix in hyphens or spaces.
- Fixed vocabulary for source and medium. Free text belongs only in the campaign name.
- Date or quarter inside the campaign name when the campaign repeats, e.g. black_friday_2026.
- Never tag internal links. UTMs on links between your own pages restart the session and overwrite the real source.
A convention you can copy
| Parameter | Rule | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source | Where the click comes from — the specific platform or list | facebook, linkedin, newsletter, partner_acme |
| utm_medium | How it travels — from a fixed list only | email, social, cpc, qr, affiliate, referral |
| utm_campaign | The initiative, plus a year when it repeats | spring_launch, black_friday_2026 |
| utm_content | Which link within the same message | header_cta, footer_link, image_a |
| utm_term | Paid keyword only | utm_builder, campaign_url |
Source versus medium, settled
Source answers where; medium answers how. An email newsletter is source=newsletter, medium=email. A paid LinkedIn ad is source=linkedin, medium=cpc. An organic LinkedIn post is source=linkedin, medium=social.
The test: if you swapped the platform but kept the delivery method, medium should stay the same and source should change. If it does not, your values are mixed up.
Keeping the convention alive
- Write the rules down once, in a shared doc everyone links to.
- Save presets for your recurring source and medium pairs so nobody types them twice.
- Review your Session source / medium report monthly and merge duplicates you spot early.
- Give one person final say on new medium values — the list should grow rarely.
Enforce it automatically
Save presets for your source and medium pairs so every link follows the convention without anyone remembering it.
Open the UTM builderFrequently asked questions
Are UTM parameters case sensitive?
Yes. Facebook, facebook and FaceBook are three separate rows in Google Analytics. Always write values in lowercase and enforce it in your builder.
Should I use hyphens or underscores in UTM values?
Either works, but pick one and never mix. Underscores are the more common convention because hyphens can be confused with words that already contain them.
What are the standard utm_medium values?
Stick to a short fixed list such as email, social, cpc, display, affiliate, referral, qr and organic_social. GA4 maps recognised mediums to default channel groups; invented values land in Unassigned.
Do I need utm_term and utm_content?
Not usually. utm_term is for paid keywords and utm_content for distinguishing two links in the same message, such as a header button versus a footer link. Leave them empty otherwise.