You’ve brainstormed and come up with the marketing plan for your business. You’ve built and launched your email campaign, paid ad campaigns, and social media campaigns. Now you’re tasked with tracking the ROI of your marketing efforts, but you look in Google Analytics and you can’t figure out how to identify your campaign traffic from the rest. To do this, you need Google Analytics campaign tracking. Read on to learn more about how to set up Google Analytics campaign tracking for your business.
What is Campaign Tracking in Google Analytics?
Google Analytics campaign tracking enables you to add special tracking codes, otherwise known as “UTM tracking codes”, to your marketing campaign URLs to help determine how visitors are getting to your website. For example, rather than using this link for an email marketing campaign:
I would use the following tracking link instead:
I’ll break down the different types of UTM tracking codes in the next section.
(Fun fact: UTM stands for “Urchin Tracking Module” and the term comes from when Google acquired Urchin Software Corporation in 2005. The product they acquired would eventually transform into the Google Analytics we know today!)
Understanding Standard Campaign Parameters in GA4
Adding the additional UTM code, or standard campaign parameters, to the end of your marketing campaign URL will tag the visitors who clicked those links and identify the following information:
- Which campaign URL they clicked on
- What they did and clicked on once they landed on your website
- Which marketing campaign was responsible for driving them to your site
Here’s a quick overview of each of the UTM parameters you can use for Google Analytics campaign tracking:
- utm_source (required). The source describes where your visitors came from and tells you the specific place where the referring link resides, such as a website, social media platform, or email service provider. Some common sources include mailchimp, constantcontact, hubspot, facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest, youtube, and spotify.
- utm_medium (required, and the most important to get right). The medium tells you how your visitors got to your site; this is the broadest category in which to sort your site visitors. GA4 uses the value in utm_medium to assign traffic to a default channel, so using the right value here is critical. Common mediums include email, social, paidsocial, paid, audio, and sms.
- utm_campaign (optional, but recommended). This parameter identifies the specific marketing campaign responsible for the traffic. The purpose of including it is to allow you to compare the performance of each of your marketing campaigns. Your campaign names should be as consistent as possible across each of the different marketing media and sources. Examples: spring_campaign, product_launch_2024, summer_sale.
- utm_content (optional). The content code differentiates between versions of creative or links. This can help you determine which marketing content is working and which needs to be reworked. Because this is dependent on your specific campaign content, there’s no uniform naming convention, so you need to be as specific as possible if you choose to use this UTM parameter. Examples: cta_button_red, creative_a, creative_b, spring_jewelry_carousel.
UTM Best Practices for Clean GA4 Data
Using UTM parameters correctly is essential for accurate reporting. A few simple rules will keep your data clean and your attribution accurate:
- Always use lowercase for all parameters. utm_source=facebook and utm_source=Facebook will show up as two different sources in GA4.
- Use underscores in place of spaces (e.g., utm_campaign=auto_pay).
- Keep it simple and descriptive. Avoid overly complex names that may confuse other team members.
- Avoid special characters like %, *, and &.
- Don’t use UTMs for internal links (buttons, banners) on your own site. Doing so overwrites the original source of traffic. Instead, use GA4 event tracking or a custom parameter like ?ref=internal-banner.
- Don’t use UTMs on platforms with autotagging enabled. For Google Ads and Microsoft (Bing) Ads, autotagging is preferable to UTMs. UTMs should only be used for incoming traffic from external sources that aren’t already automatically tagged.
Why Use the Google URL Builder for Google Analytics Campaign Tracking?
You can use the Google URL Builder at https://ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/ to successfully create the UTM parameters for your Google Analytics campaign tracking.
Here’s an example of how you would use Google’s URL builder to set up your UTM parameters.
1) Enter the link you want to use for your marketing campaign.
- Enter the link you want to use for your marketing campaign, such as: https://pamannmarketing.com/blog/how-to-set-up-google-analytics-campaign-tracking
- Add the parameters you want to track.
- Campaign source: This tells GA4 where the traffic is coming from. For a Mailchimp email, I’d use mailchimp.
- Campaign medium: This tells GA4 what kind of source the traffic is originating from. For an email newsletter, use email.
- Campaign name: This identifies which of your marketing campaigns is responsible for drawing the traffic to your site. For this blog post, I might use spring_newsletter.
- Campaign content (optional): Differentiates versions of creative or links within the same campaign, such as spring_jewelry_link_1 vs. spring_jewelry_link_2.
- Click “Copy URL” and paste it into your marketing campaign instead of your regular “untagged” link.
To make this even easier across a team, I recommend building a shared Google Sheet with dropdowns for source, medium, campaign, and content so everyone uses the same format. You can use our FREE Pam Ann Marketing UTM Tag Tracker Spreadsheet Template as a starting point!
Tracking Specific Channels Correctly in GA4
GA4 auto-assigns traffic to default channels based on the values in your utm_source and utm_medium. Here are the most common channels and the values you should use to land traffic in each one correctly. A full UTMs-to-Channels reference is in the appendix at the end of this article.
Organic Social
- utm_source: the site name (facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest)
- utm_medium: social
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: spring_jewelry_reel, spring_jewelry_carousel, spring_jewelry_image_1
Paid Social
- utm_source: the site name (facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest)
- utm_medium: paidsocial (or paid)
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: spring_jewelry_reel, spring_jewelry_carousel, spring_jewelry_image_1
Email Marketing Campaigns or Signatures
- utm_source: your email service provider (mailchimp, constantcontact, hubspot, marketo, outlook_signature)
- utm_medium: email
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: spring_jewelry_link_1, summer_preview_cta, signature_website_link
Display/Banner Ads (Other Than Google/Bing)
- utm_source: the site where the ad lives
- utm_medium: social (or display, banner, cpm)
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: creative variations
For Google Ads and Bing Ads, use autotagging instead of UTMs.
Offline Campaigns (Except Audio or SMS)
- utm_source: type of media (tv, print, qr_code, direct_mail, postcard, catalog, magazine, newspaper)
- utm_medium: paid
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: blue_postcard, 10_percent_off_qr_code, spring_nj_design_magazine_ad
This will place traffic into the “Paid Other” channel, which is the best match for this type of advertising.
Audio Campaigns
- utm_source: spotify, radio, podcast_ad
- utm_medium: audio
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: spring_commercial_a, spring_commercial_b
SMS Campaigns
- utm_source: sms
- utm_medium: sms
- utm_campaign: spring_campaign
- utm_content: spring_text_msg_a, spring_text_msg_b
Validating and Testing Your UTM Tags
Double-check your URLs before launching campaigns to ensure proper UTM tagging. There are two easy ways to validate in GA4.
- Option A: GA4 Realtime Overview Report. Visit your UTM-tagged URL, then open Reports, then Realtime Overview. Scroll to the “Event count by Event name” widget and click on page_view. Use the arrows to browse the parameters and find your UTM data.
- Option B: Tag Assistant + Debug View. Go to https://tagassistant.google.com, enter your UTM-tagged URL, and click Connect. Then in GA4, go to Admin, then DebugView. Click on the page_view event and inspect the contents of your UTM tags.
Where Are My Campaigns in GA4?
Once you have your Google Analytics campaign tracking set up, you’ll want to dive in to see how each marketing campaign has performed. In GA4, you’ll find this data under Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic Acquisition or User Acquisition. From there, you can change the primary dimension to Session source / medium, Session campaign, or Session default channel group to see your UTM-tagged traffic broken out the way you want.
This will show you:
- How many users and sessions came to your website from your campaign
- Engagement rate and average engagement time
- Key events (formerly known as conversions) attributed to each campaign
- Revenue, if you have e-commerce tracking set up
While it’s possible to analyze UTM-tagged traffic directly in GA4, I recommend using Looker Studio for UTM reporting. It’s easier to build clean, shareable reports that stakeholders can read at a glance.
Where Can I See If My Campaigns Are Converting in GA4?
To identify successful conversions from your Google Analytics campaign tracking, look at the Key events columns in your Traffic Acquisition report. You can select which key event you want to see from the dropdown at the top of the Key events column. For example, you might filter to see new newsletter subscribers. You can do the same for every key event you’ve created for your marketing campaigns.
For a more holistic look at the success of your campaigns over time, GA4 and Looker Studio together let you identify which campaigns, types of content, and content topics resonate with your target audience. You can export your findings to a spreadsheet or Google Sheet to see all of your top-converting pages and content in one report.
Finally, make it a habit to audit your UTM data regularly. Keep an eye on the “Unassigned” channel in GA4 and aim to keep it at zero or near zero. Traffic landing in “Unassigned” usually means a utm_medium value that doesn’t match any of GA4’s default channel rules.
Need Help Setting Up Google Analytics Campaign Tracking for Your Business?
As a result of our in-depth expertise in SEO and PPC, we’re extremely adept at Google Analytics. We can assist you with a variety of Google Analytics services to help you understand the results of your marketing campaigns, including campaign tagging for analyzing your digital marketing initiatives, ongoing reporting and analysis, creating custom reports and Looker Studio dashboards, Google Analytics training and coaching, and more. Contact us today to find out how our Google Analytics services can help your business.
- Why All AI-SEO Studies are Flawed (and What to Trust Instead) - March 12, 2026
- How Much AI-Generated Content is Acceptable for SEO Writing? - February 25, 2026
- How to Spot a “Black Hat” SEO/GEO Scam in 2026 - January 8, 2026