Glossary · Étiqueter et diffuser
UTM parameters
UTM parameters — or *UTM tags* — are five standard labels added to the end of a URL to say where a click came from: *utm_source*, *utm_medium*, *utm_campaign*, *utm_term*, *utm_content*. They are not a product, they are a writing convention every analytics tool knows how to read.
Dire d’où vient un clic avant qu’il ne soit trop tard pour le savoir. The forty terms of the trade
What it is for
They carry a click's origin all the way into the measurement tool of the destination site. A link with no label arrives anonymous: the site knows a visitor came, not where from. Their strength is being a standard — readable everywhere, and therefore captive to no tool.
How they are set
You add them after a question mark, separated by &. Two rules are enough: always lowercase, and always the same words for the same thing. *Instagram* and *instagram* count as two different sources in most tools, and the report splits in two without warning.
The classic mistake
Inventing a vocabulary per campaign. Three months in, the same channel appears under four names and no total is right any more. The naming convention matters more than the choice of words.
What UTMs do not do
A label says where a click came from. It never says what it earned.
That is the exact border between a traffic analytics tool and a sales attribution tool.
What Subtraq does with it
Subtraq reads the five parameters at click time and offers them as report breakdowns: by utm_source, by utm_medium, by campaign. The free tool /outils/generateur-utm writes them without a syntax error.
Read next
Un terme seul ne sert à rien. Voici ceux qui le rendent utilisable.
Source (utm_source)
Read the definition →Medium (utm_medium)
Read the definition →Campaign
Read the definition →The UTM builder
Open the page →Tracking link
Read the definition →« UTM parameters », une fois posé sur de vraies ventes
A badly placed label cannot be fixed afterwards: the link is already published. The builder writes the address without a syntax error, and the preview shows what the report will make of it.
Write a tagged link