Do UTM Parameters Work with Google Analytics 4?

If you've upgraded to Google Analytics 4, you might be asking a crucial question: Do those trusty UTM parameters you've been using for years still work? The short answer is a definite yes, but how GA4 interprets and displays that data has changed. This guide will walk you through exactly how UTMs function in Google Analytics 4, what's new, and where to find the campaign data you need to measure your marketing performance.

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So, Do UTMs Work in GA4? Yes, and They're More Important Than Ever

Campaign tagging with UTM parameters is still the gold standard for tracking where your website traffic comes from. Any link you share outside of your website - in an email newsletter, a social media post, a paid ad, or a partner blog - should be tagged with UTMs. This practice allows you to tell Google Analytics precisely which marketing efforts are driving users and conversions.

The main difference from Universal Analytics (UA) is that GA4 has a new, event-based data model. Instead of organizing everything around sessions, GA4 focuses on the specific actions (events) users take. While this changes where you look for your reports, the fundamental purpose of UTMs remains the same: to bring source, medium, and campaign information into your analytics platform.

A Quick Refresher: The 5 Classic UTM Parameters

For your UTM strategy to work, it's essential to understand the role of each classic parameter. These five tags work together to paint a clear picture of your traffic sources.

• utm_source: The specific platform or site sending you traffic. Examples: google, facebook, newsletter, linkedin.
• utm_medium: The marketing channel or category of the source. Examples: cpc (for paid ads), social, email, organic.
• utm_campaign: The name of your specific marketing campaign, sale, or promotion. Examples: summer-sale-2024, q4-webinar, new-feature-launch.
• utm_term: (Optional) Used to identify specific keywords in a paid search campaign. This is less critical now with Google Ads auto-tagging, but it's still useful for other ad platforms. Example: blue-running-shoes.
• utm_content: (Optional) Used to differentiate between links that point to the same URL within the same campaign. This is great for A/B testing ads, emails, or call-to-action buttons. *Examples: blue-button-link, header-logo-image. *

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What's New in GA4? Auto-Tagging and Additional Parameters

GA4 not only supports the classic UTMs but also introduces new, more granular session-scoped parameters that are automatically populated through integrations like Google Ads auto-tagging:

• Session Google Ads campaign: The campaign from your Google Ads account.
• Session Google Ads ad group name: The ad group from Google Ads.
• Session Google Ads keyword text: The paid keyword that generated the click.

Furthermore, GA4 introduced its own new manual tagging parameters that you can add to your URLs for more detailed analysis:

• utm_source_platform: Specifies the platform where the ad was shown, like DV360 or Search_Ads_360.
• utm_creative_format: Identifies the type of creative, such as video, native, or display.
• utm_marketing_tactic: Describes the targeting criteria used, like retargeting or prospecting.

For most day-to-day marketers, the original five UTMs are more than enough. However, for teams running complex campaigns across Google Marketing Platform, these new parameters offer a deeper level of reporting granularity.

How to Create UTM-Tracked URLs for Your Campaigns

Building your tagged URLs is a straightforward process, but it requires precision and consistency. While you can technically string the parameters together yourself, it’s much safer and easier to use a dedicated tool to avoid errors.

Google’s free GA4 Campaign URL Builder is the best tool for the job. It ensures your URLs are formatted correctly every time.

Example: Tagging a Social Media Post

Let's say you're running a campaign for a summer sale and you want to track clicks from a specific post on your Facebook page.

Here’s how you’d fill out the fields in the Campaign URL Builder:

• Website URL: https://www.yourstore.com/summer-sale
• Campaign Source (utm_source): facebook
• Campaign Medium (utm_medium): social
• Campaign Name (utm_campaign): summer-sale-2024
• Campaign Content (utm_content): organic-post-image1 (This helps you distinguish traffic from this organic post versus, say, a paid ad with the same campaign name).

The tool will then generate your final, shareable URL:

https://www.yourstore.com/summer-sale?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer-sale-2024&utm_content=organic-post-image1

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Where to Find Your UTM Data in Google Analytics 4

Okay, you’ve tagged your URLs and launched your campaign. Now, where does that data actually show up? Unlike Universal Analytics, the reporting interface in GA4 is different, and finding your campaign data can feel like a scavenger hunt if you don't know where to look.

The primary location for your UTM-tagged traffic data is under the Acquisition reports.

1. The Traffic Acquisition Report

This report shows you how users first arrived at your site for a new session. It’s the best place to analyze the performance of your campaigns at the session level.

• Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
• The default primary dimension is "Session default channel grouping." Click the drop-down arrow next to it.
• Choose a UTM-related dimension from the list:

2. Adding Secondary Dimensions for More Detail

What about utm_content and utm_term? These aren't shown by default. To see them, you need to add a secondary dimension.

• While viewing the Traffic acquisition report, click the blue + icon next to the primary dimension dropdown.
• In the search box, type "Session" to filter the options.
• Select Session manual ad content to see your utm_content data or Session manual term for your utm_term data.

GA4 will add a new column to your report, allowing you to see which specific ads or link placements are driving the most sessions, engagement, and conversions for a given campaign.

3. User Acquisition Report

This report focuses on how users were first acquired, rather than how they arrived for each new session. It's useful for understanding which campaigns bring new, first-time users to your brand.

• Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > User acquisition.
• Similar to the Traffic acquisition report, you can change the primary dimension to First user campaign or First user source / medium to see the original campaign details that brought a user to your site for the very first time.

UTM Best Practices for Clean and Accurate Data

To get the most out of your campaign tracking, you need to follow a few simple rules. Inconsistent UTM tagging can lead to messy, fragmented data that is nearly impossible to analyze.

1. Consistency is Everything

Google Analytics treats an entry as unique based on its exact text, and it's case-sensitive. This means Facebook, facebook, and face-book will all show up as three separate sources in your reports.

• Always use lowercase. This is the simplest way to avoid case-related issues.
• Use dashes instead of spaces. Spaces in URLs can get encoded into messy characters (%20). Use dashes for readability, like summer-sale instead of summer sale.
• Stick to a single naming convention. Don't use linkedin one day and LinkedIn-Pro the next. Decide on one format and stick to it.

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2. Create a Naming Convention Document

The easiest way to maintain consistency, especially across a team, is to create a simple spreadsheet or shared document that outlines your UTM naming rules. List out the standard source/medium combinations you use and the format for your campaign names.

When someone new needs to create a tagged link, they can just refer to the document instead of guessing. This discipline pays off tremendously in the long run with clean, easy-to-read reports.

3. Use URL Shorteners for Cleaner Links

UTM-tagged URLs can get quite long and unwieldy, which isn't ideal for sharing on social media. After generating your full URL with the builder, use a service like Bitly to create a shorter, cleaner link that redirects to the full version. The tracking will still work perfectly, but the user experience is much better.

Final Thoughts

Using UTM parameters with Google Analytics 4 is not only possible but essential for understanding the true ROI of your marketing activities. By adopting a consistent, organized approach to tagging your campaign URLs, you unlock clear, actionable insights within the GA4 acquisition reports, showing you exactly what’s working and what’s not.

As you gather more campaign data, pulling it all together from different platforms and then digging through GA4 reports to find answers can be time-consuming. Instead of manually cross-referencing dashboards, we built Graphed to do the heavy lifting for you. You can connect Google Analytics, your ad platforms, and your CRM in seconds and then just ask questions in plain English, like, "Which campaigns from Facebook drove the most revenue last month?" and get an instant dashboard - no digging required.