How do I tag a link so I know where the visit came from?
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The full page address, copied from the browser bar.
A preset fills source and medium. Every value stays editable.
Lowercase words joined by hyphens read best in a report.
Who sent the visit.
The kind of channel. Reuse the same few words every time.
The push this link belongs to.
Optional. An audience or keyword, if you track one.
Optional. Tells two links in one message apart.
Paste a page address and name the source, medium and campaign. The tagged link appears here as you type.
- Page addressNeeded
- SourceNeeded
- MediumNeeded
- CampaignNeeded
- Term and contentOptional
The five tags on a tracked link
A UTM builder adds up to five labelled tags to a store link so your analytics report can say where each visit came from, so a newsletter link to a spring sale page carries the source newsletter, the medium email and the campaign spring-sale, and every visit through it is filed under that campaign.
The tag names are the five standard UTM parameters that analytics tools read. The tidying rules and the notes are our own house style, not a published standard.
Three tags are needed for a link to be worth tagging, and two are optional. Each one answers a different question in the report, which is why putting the same word in two of them wastes a tag.
- Source
- Who sent the visit: newsletter, the name of a social network, a creator handle, print. It is the most specific of the three required tags, and the one reports list first.
- Medium
- What kind of channel it was: email, social, paid_social, sms, qr. Reports group visits into channels by this tag, so keep to a short fixed list and reuse it every time.
- Campaign
- Which push the link belongs to, such as spring-sale or restock-alert. It is the tag that lets one sale be read across every channel that carried it.
- Term
- Optional. Originally for the paid keyword behind an ad; many stores use it for an audience or a segment name instead. Leave it blank rather than inventing a use for it.
- Content
- Optional. Tells two links in the same message apart, such as the hero button and the footer link, so you can see which one people actually used.
- Tidying
- Values are lowercased, spaces become hyphens and symbols are dropped, up to 100 characters a tag. Reports are case-sensitive, so Email and email would otherwise arrive as two separate sources.
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Six store links, before and after tagging
Illustrative links on a made-up domain. Every tagged link and every note below is produced by the same builder the tool above runs, including the one it refuses.
| Scenario | Link pasted | Tags typed | Tagged link | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly newsletter to the spring sale page | https://example-store.com/collections/spring-sale | newsletter / email / spring-sale / hero-button | https://example-store.com/collections/spring-sale?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-sale&utm_content=hero-button | Nothing to tidy. |
| Values typed the way people talk | example-store.com/products/linen-shirt | Newsletter / Email / Summer Launch 2026 | https://example-store.com/products/linen-shirt?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-launch-2026 | Source: lowercased. Medium: lowercased. Campaign: lowercased, spaces turned into hyphens. |
| A product link that already had tags | https://example-store.com/products/candle?variant=4411&utm_source=old&utm_campaign=winter | creator-anna / influencer / autumn-candles / story-1 | https://example-store.com/products/candle?variant=4411&utm_source=creator-anna&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=autumn-candles&utm_content=story-1 | The link already carried utm_source, utm_campaign. Kept the link's own parameter (variant) and added the tags after it.. |
| Flyer in the parcel, printed as a code | https://example-store.com/pages/refer | print / qr / parcel-insert | https://example-store.com/pages/refer?utm_source=print&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=parcel-insert | Nothing to tidy. |
| Same word for source and medium | https://example-store.com/ | sms / sms / restock-alert | https://example-store.com/?utm_source=sms&utm_medium=sms&utm_campaign=restock-alert | Source and medium are the same word. |
| Not a web address | ftp://files.example-store.com/catalog.pdf | newsletter / email / test | Refused | Only web addresses starting with http or https can be tagged. |
Where tagged links go wrong
Never tag a link from your own store to your own store
A tagged link inside your own navigation or a banner restarts the visit as if it came from that campaign, and the real source, the ad or the email that brought the shopper in, is lost from the report. Tags belong on links that live outside the store.
A redirect can drop the tags
If the destination redirects, from http to https, from a short link or from an old page to a new one, check the page you land on still shows the tags in the address bar. Some redirects pass them along and some do not.
Tags label the visit, not the sale
A tagged link tells your analytics where a session came from. Whether that session ended in an order, and which order, is decided by your analytics attribution settings, and two tools can credit the same order differently.
Consistency matters more than any single link
One campaign tagged newsletter in one email and news-letter in the next becomes two rows that never add up. Pick the words once, write them down, and reuse them.
Long links travel badly
A tagged link past about 200 characters is fine in an email button or an ad, but awkward in a text message and dense on a printed code. The builder flags it; a link shortener that keeps the full address behind it solves it.
UTM link questions
What is a UTM link?
An ordinary link to your store with a few labelled tags added to the end. The page opens exactly as before; the tags are read by your analytics, which files the visit under the source, medium and campaign they name.
Which UTM tags are required?
Source, medium and campaign. With those three a visit can be filed under a channel and a campaign. Term and content are optional and only worth filling when you have a real question they answer, such as which of two buttons people used.
Should UTM values be lowercase?
Yes. Reports treat capital letters as different values, so Email and email split one channel into two rows. This builder lowercases every value and turns spaces into hyphens, and it tells you when it did.
What happens if my link already has UTM tags?
They are replaced, not added to. A link carrying two sources would be filed unpredictably, so the builder removes any existing tags, keeps every other parameter the link needs, such as a product variant, and writes the new tags after them.
Can I use UTM tags on links inside my own store?
It is best not to. A tagged internal link makes the visit look like it started from that campaign and hides where the shopper really came from. Use tags on emails, ads, posts, texts and print, which are the links that bring visitors in.
Does this tool store my links?
No. It runs in your browser, nothing you type is sent anywhere, and there is no share link, so an unreleased landing page stays private.
The link brings them in. The page decides what happens next.
Nudgesmart credits an order to the popup campaign that earned it, by customer tag first and then by discount code for guest checkouts.
