Analytics Glossary

UTM Parameters

Tiny tags on your links that make every marketing channel measurable.

UTM parameters are tags you add to the end of a URL to track where your traffic comes from. There are three primary UTM parameters: utm_source identifies the platform (e.g., “google”, “newsletter”), utm_medium identifies the channel type (e.g., “cpc”, “email”, “social”), and utm_campaign identifies the specific campaign (e.g., “spring-sale”, “product-launch”).

Here is why owners love them. Say you post the same offer to Facebook, your newsletter, and a flyer with a QR code. A week later, which one worked? Normal links cannot tell you — visitors from the flyer and the newsletter both look like direct traffic. Tagged links can: your dashboard shows “newsletter: 214 visits, facebook: 67, flyer: 12”, and suddenly you know where to spend your next hour of marketing effort.

Visitors see the exact same page — the tag is invisible to them and changes nothing about your site. And because UTM parameters are a standard every analytics tool understands, links you tag today keep working wherever your data lives. UTM tracking is built into every Crafty Meerkat plan, with no setup required.

How it works

A tagged link is just your normal address plus the tags after a question mark: yoursite.com/summer-sale?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale tells Crafty Meerkat exactly which campaign drove that visit. You never have to build these by hand — the Campaign Links wizard in your dashboard asks three plain questions (where you are sharing, which page, what to call the campaign) and hands you the finished link to copy. Results appear in the Campaigns card on your Analytics view, grouped by source, medium, and campaign.

How to put it to work

1
Build your first campaign link
Open Campaign Links in your dashboard, pick the page you are promoting, answer where you are sharing it, and name the campaign. Copy the finished link.
2
Use it everywhere the link leaves your hands
Paste the tagged link into the post, email, ad, or QR-code generator — anywhere except your own site’s internal links, which should stay untagged.
3
Name things consistently
Stick to lowercase and hyphens, and use the same source names every time (“facebook”, not sometimes “FB”). “july-newsletter” beats “final-v2-new” when you are reading reports in six months.
4
Review the Campaigns card weekly
Compare visits and goal conversions per campaign. Double down on what brings visitors, drop what doesn’t.

Tips from the den

◆Never put UTM tags on links between pages of your own site — internal tagged links overwrite the visitor’s real source and corrupt your data.
◆Tag the humble channels too: email signatures, invoices, WhatsApp broadcasts, and printed QR codes are exactly the sources that otherwise vanish into direct traffic.
◆UTM values are case-sensitive in most tools — “Newsletter” and “newsletter” report as two different sources, so pick lowercase and stay there.

See it live — no signup

The demo dashboard runs on a real site with real traffic.

Open the live demo →

Common questions

Do UTM parameters change what visitors see?

No. The page looks and works exactly the same — the tags ride along in the address purely so your analytics can credit the visit to the right campaign. The only visible difference is a longer URL in the browser bar.

Do I need all three UTM parameters?

Source is the essential one; medium and campaign add useful detail. The Campaign Links wizard fills in all three sensibly from your answers, so in practice you never have to decide — every link comes out complete and consistent.

Do UTM links hurt SEO?

Not when used normally — search engines understand campaign tags on shared links. The one habit to avoid is tagging your own internal navigation, which can create duplicate page addresses. Tag outbound shares, leave internal links clean.