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The problem

Oftentimes聽when using Google Analytics to analyze website traffic, a significant amount of source traffic appears as 鈥淒irect鈥�:

Direct traffic is typically assumed to be visitors manually entering the URL of the website or clicking on a bookmarked link. This is inaccurate.聽Direct聽traffic also serves as a catch-all term聽for any traffic that Analytics cannot determine the source of. This can lead to inaccurate reporting and misattribution in Analytics.聽Fortunately, there is a way to properly categorize website traffic: UTM parameters (or 鈥渢ags鈥�).

Capturing valuable insights with UTM parameters

UTM Stands for Urchin Tracking Module (Urchin being a company later acquired by Google whose software became Google Analytics). Each UTM consists of five URL parameters (two of which are optional) that appear after a URL. These parameters can be used to send custom data to Google Analytics to improve聽reporting accuracy. They include:

• Campaign Source - The referrer: (e.g. google, newsletter)
• Campaign Medium - Marketing medium: (e.g. cpc, banner, email)
• Campaign Name - Product, promo code, or slogan (e.g. spring_sale)
• Campaign Term - Identify the paid keywords.
• Campaign Content - Use to differentiate ads. Can also be used to differentiate language (eg: EN/ FR)

Whenever a UTM code is used (e.g.聽when a user clicks a UTM-tagged link), Analytics will record the information it contains. You can recognize UTM tagged links by analyzing their structure, as we will see in the example below.

A real-world example

Consider this Source/Medium chart from an article on the website:

In the chart above, there are five sources that would normally be counted as Direct traffic but are more accurately captured due to the use of UTMs:

• Giving Site / homepage hero 鈥� The CTA on the Giving site homepage hero was tagged with a UTM
• Alumni / Homepage 鈥� The Alumni website banner link was UTM-tagged
• Giving/ Article 鈥� Another article linking to this one was UTM-tagged
• Alumni / Form 鈥� A link on an alumni site form thank you message was UTM-tagged.
• whatsnewstaff / email 鈥� A newsletter was UTM-tagged.

In tagging our links with UTM parameters across different promotional channels, we can paint a much more accurate picture of where users came to the article from. Each of the links above had at least one distinct UTM tag to indicate their placement. For example, consider the Giving site / homepage hero:

The red 鈥淟earn more鈥� button contains the following UTM tagged link:

Breaking this URL down, we can see how the three UTM parameters were used:

• utm_source: Giving - The Giving website is the source of the traffic.
• utm_medium: Homepage Hero 鈥� The link is located in the homepage hero.
• utm_campaign: 200 legacy challenge is the promotional campaign (%20 denotes a space and can be ignored for our purposes).
• utm_content: EN 鈥� The target language for the link

(This example doesn't show an optional UTM term that can be used to provide additional context regarding the promotional period (e.g: Winter 2021).)

Now, whenever a user clicks the 鈥淟earn more鈥� link, Analytics will register Giving as a source and track the data appropriately.

Good places for UTMs

A number of good places to add UTM tagged links include:

• Call to action links.
• Social media post links.
• Email broadcasts.
• External links pointing to your website.
• Digital advertising campaigns.

Creating a UTM tag

1. Go to the and input your target webpage URL.
2. Add the information you'd like to use for tracking (at minimum, include a Source, Medium, and Campaign name)
3. Copy the generated URL and share it on the platform of your choice.
4. Create additional UTMs if necessary.

Tips

For consistency, keep a spreadsheet which keeps track of which Parameters you use and for what. This is especially important because UTM parameters are case-sensitive. (For example, be sure to consistently use the term聽Social if that鈥檚 how you want it to appear in your reports. Mixing 鈥渟ocial鈥� and 鈥淪ocial鈥� would split your data into two brackets, making it harder to get an accurate portrait of engagement.)

Mark-James McDougall is the Webmaster for University Advancement. He is happy to assist the McGill community in familiarizing themselves with using Analytics to capture valuable insights, and welcomes questions and feedback at mark-james.mcdougall [at] mcgill.ca.

Editor's note

We're very pleased Mark-James' was able to share such helpful insights and hope you'll apply his suggestions to your own practices! There is one cautionary note we'd like to mention - (as mentioned in the example of using a UTM to track clicks from the Giving hero). However, we recognize that doing so might yield a more convenient report or insight into short-term campaign decisions. To address this, we have a few additional recommendations to apply in these cases:

1. Only use UTM for clicks between pages on a single site to gain actionable insights
2. This should only be done for a short, set period of time
3. Take care to add enough detail to each UTM code to distinguish it from other active UTMs