Measurement
A UTM naming system your team can keep consistent
Define source, medium, campaign and creative tags once, then use a short worksheet to keep referral reporting understandable.
Campaign tags are small pieces of text with a large effect on reporting. If one person uses Facebook, another uses facebook and a third uses fb, the team has created three labels for the same intended source. The resulting report may be technically accurate while remaining operationally confusing.
Define a vocabulary before building the next batch of links. Google documents UTM parameters as a way to identify campaign referrals; a useful team convention makes those labels consistent and interpretable. See the official campaign URL guidance.
Give each field one purpose
| Field | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source |
Where the visit originates | salfars.space |
utm_medium |
The channel classification | referral |
utm_campaign |
The initiative | journals |
utm_content |
The individual placement or article | creative-testing-matrix |
The example is an editorial referral, not a paid ad. For advertising, agree the channel names with the person maintaining your analytics. Check how manual tags interact with each platform's auto-tagging rather than replacing automatically generated identifiers without a reason.
Write a short naming contract
Use lowercase values and a documented separator. Keep campaign names stable across a reporting period. Decide whether geography, product and promotion belong in the campaign field or in a separate reference document. Do not overload every tag with the full marketing brief.
Avoid personal information in URLs. Tags can be visible in browser history, server logs and links copied by readers. A campaign identifier should not contain a customer's email, name or private account information.
Build and test the link
A referral from our creative journal might use this shape:
https://salfars.com/?utm_source=salfars.space&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=journals&utm_content=creative-testing-matrix
Use a URL builder rather than concatenating strings when values contain spaces or punctuation. Check that existing query parameters are preserved, the final destination is correct and redirects retain the tags. A well-named link that drops its query string during a redirect will not answer the reporting question.
Keep tags off ordinary internal navigation
Use your agreed event or content reporting to understand movement within a site. Campaign tags are intended to describe acquisition sources; using them on normal internal links can confuse attribution. Cross-domain editorial referrals are different from navigation between two pages on the same journal.
Maintain a link register
Record the owner, destination, source, medium, campaign, content, publication date and intended reporting question. Review new entries before a campaign launches. A small register is easier to maintain than repairing hundreds of inconsistent tags later.
When you read the report, remember that a campaign label identifies the link and reporting context. It does not prove that the content caused a sale. Combine referral data with commercial context and, where appropriate, a designed experiment.
Our journals use source and article tags on links to Salfars. They do not add analytics scripts or change the main Salfars website. Any conversion analysis depends on the reporting already available at the destination.