Campaign Tagging for Google Analytics
Campaign tagging is performed by adding parameters (or tags) – known as UTM parameters - to the destination URLs you want to use for your marketing campaigns. Without these tags, all visitors to your website will appear to come through “organic”, “referral” or “direct”.
Julian Erbsloeh
1.Campaign tagging explained
All campaigns need to be tagged in order to be tracked correctly in GA.
How do I decide what to tag?
Only tag what you need to. If Google Analytics is connected to your Google AdWords account and you have auto-tagging enabled you don’t need to tag your AdWords URLs. You DO need to tag links in all your other campaigns such as non-Google paid search ads, banners and other ads, email campaigns, affiliate and social media campaigns.
How do I create my URL with campaign parameters?
Campaign links consist of a standard URL followed by a question mark (?) then your campaign tags (or parameters). You must use predefined tags that GA will recognise (see table on the following page). The best approach for this is to use the GA URL Builder. You can use the URL builder to generate your tagged URLs for all marketing campaigns that will be directed to pages on your website.
Which campaign parameters should I use?
In general you only need to define the source, medium & campaign (and keyword for paid search campaigns). You can define the content in order to add an extra level of information to campaigns e.g. ad group or ad headline, identifier for internal use, version or type of an ad (e.g. leaderboard or MPU for display ads), etc. The utm_content parameter can also be used effectively to differentiate between links in an email campaign that point to the same page, e.g. two links to the homepage of the site: one in the header of the email and one in the body copy.
Inconsistent naming will make analysis difficult!
Standardise your tag names and be consistent. Check the campaigns report in GA to see if a similar source/medium exists to ensure it is named the same. Always use lowercase for the parameter values the reports are case sensitive. The above considerations will make analysis both easier and more effective.
How do I know if my URLs are going to work?
Always test your tagged URLs – ensure that you are directed to the page you expected to land on and that the parameters are showing correctly at the end of the URL.
Beware of duplicate content
UTM parameters can cause duplicate content issues, with multiple versions of the same URL existing to avoid this risk use _setAllowAnchor in the GA tracking code: _gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]); This allows the UTM parameters to be added to the URL with an anchor (#) instead of a question mark (?). Only GA can then read the parameters after the #
2.Recommended tagging conventions
Tagging for source dimensions
URL tag - utm_source=
description - source visitor came from e.g. facebook or bing
paid search - google, bing, yahoo
email - newsletter email+list+name
social - facebook, x, pinterest
affiliate - affiliate+name affiliate+platform
external content - website+name, blog+name, publication+name
tips - exclude http://www, always use lowercase
Tagging for medium dimensions
URL tag - utm_medium=
description - channel visitor arrived from e.g. cpc, affiliate, social, email, display
paid search - cpc
Email - email
social - social
affiliate - affiliate
external content - content online+pr
tips - Use lowercase and be consistent. Limit mediums to top-level channels
Tagging for campaign dimensions
URL tag - utm_campaign=
description - Ad+campaign+name Marketing+campaign +name
paid search - campaign+name
email - campaign+name, promotion+name, newsletter+name
social - campaign+name, promotion+name
affiliate - affiliate+type, publisher+name (if source is used for network name)
external content - campaign+name, promotion+name
tips - Campaign name for cpc should always match the name used in the ad platform
Tagging for keyword dimensions
URL tag - utm_term=
description - Search terms you bid on by default. Can be configured for some engines to track actual search query
paid search - For Bing: use {keyword} to track bid term or {QueryString} for the search query
email - don’t use
social - don’t use
affiliate - don’t use
external content - anchor+text
tips - You can only use {keyword} or {QueryString}, not both
Tagging for ad content dimensions
URL tag - utm_content=
description - An identifier for the type of ad or link that is clicked
paid search - ad+headline, ad+identifier
email - email+version (if split testing) link+location (e.g. header or body)
social - social+content+ type (e.g status update, promoted tweet, etc.)
affiliate - affiliate+id
external content - guest+post, review, competition
3.Example tagging
Email http://www.example.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=april+2013+newsletter
Paid http://www.example.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=analytics+audit&utm_term=ga+audit
Social http://www.example.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer+promotion
Notes:
Use the plus symbol (+) within a parameter value to denote a space.
Use URL shortening for social media campaigns to avoid sharing lengthy URLs, e.g. goo.gl or bit.ly
Top tip
Never use campaign tagging parameters for content on the website itself, e.g. promotional banners. This will cause inflated traffic issues and will overwrite the original source of effected visits.
4.Stay consistent
Google offer a campaign tagging tool which does a great job helping with consistency, you can find it here: https://ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/
Real consistency, however, requires a spread sheet that keeps track of all your historic campaigns and encourages its user to make sure naming conventions are adhered to, the spelling of source and medium is always identical (including caps). Even with that spread sheet in situ, there is no guarantee of the data being clean. Typically, this is a game of too many cooks and too little time.
If you want to take a look at Google's official documentation on the subject, bookmark this page in case something changes at some point in the future.
