Also called UTM tag, UTM code
A UTM parameter is a tag added to the end of a URL that tells analytics tools where a visit came from.
UTMs are five agreed-upon query parameters — source, medium, campaign, term, content — appended after a question mark. Analytics tools read them and attribute the visit, which is the only reliable way to distinguish traffic from your Instagram bio, your newsletter and a podcast mention that all land on the same page.
Their weakness is that they are hand-written strings. `Instagram`, `instagram` and `IG` become three separate sources in the report, and nobody notices until a quarter of data is split across spellings. Deciding a lowercase convention once, and writing it down, prevents most of the mess.
UTMs are visible to the visitor, which is worth remembering before tagging a link you will paste in a bio.
In practice
`?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=bio&utm_campaign=spring_drop` separates bio traffic from story traffic even though both come from Instagram.
Common mistake
Tagging internal links between your own pages. It restarts the session attribution and erases the original source.
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