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What are UTM codes, in plain English

Updated 2026-11-10

Open any link you have been sent in a marketing email and look at the end of the address. You will often see something like ?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email. Those are UTM codes.

A UTM code is a label added to the end of a web address. It says where the visitor came from. That is all it is. It does not change the page, and it does not install anything on the visitor's device.

Where the name comes from

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was a web analytics company that Google bought and turned into Google Analytics. The name stuck, and the labels are now read by almost every analytics tool and many forms and applicant systems.

The five labels

There are five standard UTM codes. Each one answers a different question.

• utm_source answers “which site or app sent this person?” Examples: facebook, linkedin, indeed.
• utm_medium answers “what kind of channel was it?” Examples: social, email, flyer.
• utm_campaign answers “which effort was this part of?” Example: night-shift-rn-hiring.
• utm_content answers “which version?” Use it to tell two posts in the same campaign apart. It is optional.
• utm_term was built for the keyword in a paid search ad. Most social posts do not need it.

What a full address looks like

Here is a landing page address with UTM codes added:

https://example.com/careers/rn?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=night-shift-rn-hiring

Everything after the question mark is the labels. Each one is a name, an equals sign and a value. They are joined with an ampersand. The page that opens is still example.com/careers/rn.

Why they matter

Without UTM codes, every visit from social media looks the same in your reports. You can see that 200 people came from “social”, but not which post, which platform or which campaign. If you posted the same job on Facebook and LinkedIn, you cannot tell which one worked.

With UTM codes, each visit carries its own label. Your analytics tool can group visits by source and campaign. If the labels are also saved with the application, you can tell which post an applicant came from.

Why people do not use them

Building these addresses by hand is tedious and easy to get wrong. One person writes Facebook, another writes facebook and a third writes fb, and the reports split into three rows. Long addresses also look messy in a post.

A few habits help:

• Use lowercase only. Analytics tools treat Facebook and facebook as different values.
• Use hyphens instead of spaces.
• Pick one name for each platform and always use it.
• Keep campaign names short but readable, such as night-shift-rn-hiring.

How to read them in a report

Once visits carry labels, a report can answer questions you could not answer before. Group by source and you see which platforms send people. Group by campaign and you see which job or offer drew the most interest. Put the two together and you see, for one job, how each platform did.

The labels are only as good as the habits behind them. If two people on your team write the same platform differently, the report splits it, and the comparison you wanted gets harder to see. That is the most common problem with UTM codes, and it is a people problem, not a technical one.

Are they safe?

UTM codes are visible in the web address, so never put anything private in them. Used as intended, they hold only a platform name and a campaign name, which is not personal information.

Where Quill Tracker fits

Quill Tracker does the typing for you. You paste your landing page, name the campaign and tick where you will post. It makes one short link for each place and adds the labels when someone taps the link. It adds utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, plus utm_content when you set one, and a click ID called qlid. It never overwrites a label your page address already has.

For the full picture, read how to track which social post a job applicant came from.

Quick answers

Do UTM codes change what the visitor sees?

No. The page looks the same. The labels sit in the web address and are read by analytics tools and forms, not shown on the page.

Do I have to use all five UTM codes?

No. Most people use three: source, medium and campaign. Content is useful when you run several versions of one post. Term is mainly for paid search keywords.

Can someone remove UTM codes?

A visitor can edit the address, but almost nobody does. Some privacy tools strip tracking labels, so treat the numbers as a very good guide rather than a perfect count.