How to read your result
The part most builders skip
GA4 reports a channel it worked out from your tags, not the tags themselves
Google Analytics 4 does not report your utm_medium. It runs every visit through an ordered list of rules and files it under the first channel that matches. This builder runs your values through the same rules, in Google's order and against Google's own list of sites, before you publish. If last quarter's visits are already sitting in Unassigned, paste them in and it tells you why and what to use instead.
Your raw utm_medium is stored, but the reports most people read are built from the default channel group. Google publishes the rules behind it as an ordered list, and the first rule that matches wins. Get the order wrong and the prediction is wrong, which is why this tool follows Google's list to the letter and shows each step.
- The order decides the answerGoogle checks Shopping, then Social, then Video, then Search, then the newer AI Assistant channel, then Referral, Email and the rest. So instagram / organic is Organic Social, not Organic Search, because Instagram is on Google's social list and the social rule comes first.
- A shop campaign is filed as Shopping, whatever the mediumOrganic Shopping needs only a shopping site as the source or a campaign name containing shop or shopping. A Christmas email tagged christmas-shopping goes to Organic Shopping, not Email. The tool flags it and suggests a name without the word.
- YouTube is a video site, not a social oneGoogle's page names YouTube as a video site for both Organic Video and Paid Video, and its source list puts youtube in the video category only. So youtube / cpc is Paid Video. TikTok, which Google also mentions alongside video, is on the social list, and the social rule is checked first.
- Email, SMS and Referral are wider than people thinkEmail matches a source or a medium of email, e-mail, e_mail or e mail. SMS matches sms in either. Referral takes referral, app and link. Newsletter matches none of them, which is the classic reason a send appears to produce nothing.
- The source has to be on Google's listPaid Social needs a source on Google's social list and a paid medium. facebook, facebook.com, ig, lnkd.in and t.co are all on it; facebook-page is not, so a paid link tagged that way drops to Paid Other. The tool carries the whole list and suggests the listed name.
- Ad platform codes stay intactCodes such as {{campaign.name}} for Meta, __CAMPAIGN_NAME__ for TikTok and {campaignid} for Google Ads are left exactly as typed: never lower cased, hyphenated or encoded, so the platform can fill them in.
The rules are checked in the browser against Google's site list of over 800 sources. Open "Show the working" under a built link to see each of the 19 rules ticked or crossed, with the first match picked out.
The mediums GA4 recognises, and what each becomes
| utm_medium | GA4 channel | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| social | Organic Social | Unpaid posts, bio links and stories |
| paid-social | Paid Social, with a listed social source | Social ads and boosted posts |
| cpc | Paid Search, Paid Social, Paid Video or Paid Shopping, by source | Ads, when auto tagging is off |
| display | Display | Banner placements |
| video | Organic Video | Unpaid links on video sites |
| Every newsletter and send, never the word newsletter | ||
| referral | Referral | Partner sites, press, creator links, QR codes on print |
| affiliate | Affiliates | Affiliate links |
| audio | Audio | Podcast reads and audio ads |
| sms | SMS | Text messages |
| organic | Organic Search | Rarely needed: search engines set it themselves |
| newsletter | Unassigned | Nothing. The most common tagging mistake |
Getting tagging right across a team
Building one link is easy. The hard part is that six months later three people have tagged the same channel four ways and the report cannot be read.
Agree the words once
Source is the site or platform, medium is the kind of traffic, campaign is the push. The two classic errors are mirror images: the platform in the medium (utm_medium=facebook) or the kind of traffic in the source (utm_source=social). Keep one shared list of agreed values and take values only from it.
Never tag your own internal links
A tagged link between two of your own pages starts a fresh session and replaces where the visitor really came from, so a visitor from a paid ad is credited to your own banner. Use events to count internal clicks.
For creators: showing a brand what your post did
Ask the brand for the link they want you to use, then check it here before you post. If they leave the tagging to you, use the brand's name in the campaign, your handle in utm_content and a separate content value for each placement (bio, story, description). When the campaign ends, ask for the sessions on those content values. That number belongs in your next pitch, beside your rate from the UGC rate calculator and a profile written with the bio generator.
Monthly plans
When the reporting is the part you need doing
Clean links tell you which post earned the click. Our social media management plans include the tagging convention, the GA4 setup and a plain English monthly report.
Choose the plan that matches how much you want to post each month. Every plan runs month to month, with two months' notice and no setup fee.
Swipe to see all five plans
Small Business Social Pack
12 designed posts a month on one platform.
- Posts12 static
- Platforms1
- VideoNone
- CommunityNot included
£149a month
Add to basketGet this as a quote (PDF)
Social Media Management: Seed Plan
16 posts a month across 2 platforms, with a strategy behind them.
- Posts16
- Platforms2
- VideoNone
- CommunityMonitoring
£399a month
Add to basketGet this as a quote (PDF)
Social Media Management: Grow Plan
16 posts a month, 8 of them Reels.
- Posts16
- Platforms3
- Video8 Reels
- CommunityMonitoring
£799a month
Add to basketGet this as a quote (PDF)
Social Media Management: Scale Plan
12 Reels a month, Stories, and your comments answered Monday to Saturday.
- Posts16
- Platforms3
- Video12 Reels
- CommunityMon to Sat
£1,499a month
Add to basketGet this as a quote (PDF)
Social Media Management: Elite Plan
A post every working day on up to 5 platforms, with paid social and filming days.
- Posts20
- PlatformsUp to 5
- VideoReels and creator videos
- Community7 days
£2,499a month
Add to basketGet this as a quote (PDF)
When a link lands in Unassigned
How to fix the visits already in Unassigned
Unassigned is not lost traffic. The visits are recorded; they are simply filed under no channel, so they vanish from the views people check. The fix is in the tags, from now on. GA4 does not refile old visits under the default channel group.
Find the pairs
In GA4 open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition. Change the table's first column to Session source / medium, add a filter where Session default channel group exactly matches Unassigned, and set the date range to the last quarter. Copy the rows, or download them as a CSV, and choose "Fix my Unassigned visits" at the top of the tool.
Read the reason, then change the source of the tag
Each pair comes back with the rule it failed and the values to use instead. Change them wherever the link was made: the email platform's default tracking settings, the link in bio tool, the ad's URL parameters or the shared sheet your team copies from.
Some rows are not tagging mistakes
A source of (not set) usually means the tags were lost on the way, often to a redirect, or the first page view was not recorded. Links that AI assistants tag themselves with a source and no medium cannot be changed by you; a custom channel group in GA4 can file them as AI Assistant. The fixer says which is which.
Check it worked
Open the new link, then look at the Realtime report in GA4 for your campaign name. It shows within minutes, so you never wait a month to find out a tag was wrong.
How we worked it out
Methodology, and what this tool cannot see
Where the rules come from. The manual traffic rules on Google's default channel group page, in the order Google lists them, with the regular expressions copied exactly. Unassigned is what GA4 uses when no rule matches.
Where the site lists come from. Google's source categories spreadsheet, linked from the same page, which sorts each source into search, social, shopping or video. The spreadsheet could not be downloaded directly when this page was built, so the page carries the copy published in the dbt-ga4 project, which says it was taken from that link. Google says the definitions may change, and sources it adds later will not be known here until the page is updated.
Two judgement calls. Google does not say whether its matching ignores upper case, so values are compared in lower case; mixed case still splits your reports, which is why the builder lower cases by default. Google writes the Email rule as source or medium equals email, e-mail, e_mail or e mail, so it is read as an exact match: newsletter-email is not Email.
How it was checked. The engine was run against more than fifty cases before this page shipped, including each case the old page got wrong: instagram / organic, a christmas-shopping email, youtube / cpc, the AI Assistant, app and link mediums, sources such as facebook.com, ig, lnkd.in and t.co, and ad platform codes. Every placement in the list was checked and none lands in Unassigned.
What it cannot see. Your GA4 property: any custom channel group you have built, Google Ads auto tagging, and links GA4 classifies from the referring site rather than from tags. It cannot tell whether a redirect strips your tags, so open each link once before a campaign goes out. And it cannot tell you whether the traffic was any good, only where it will be filed.
Nothing here is transmitted. The links, the channel check and the rows you paste from GA4 are all handled in your browser, so you can safely use an address that is not public yet. Nothing reaches us unless you ask us to email you the result.
Questions people ask
What is a UTM link?
A normal web address with tracking values added after a question mark. They tell your analytics where the visitor came from, which campaign sent them and which link they clicked, so a visit that would otherwise show as Direct or Referral is credited properly.
Why does my campaign traffic show as Unassigned in GA4?
Because no rule in Google's default channel group matches its source and medium. The most common cause is a medium Google does not use, such as newsletter instead of email, or a source with no medium at all. Choose "Fix my Unassigned visits" in the builder, paste the rows, and it gives the reason and the values to use for each pair.
How many UTM parameters are there?
Google lists nine: utm_id, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_source_platform, utm_term, utm_content, utm_creative_format and utm_marketing_tactic. Source, medium and campaign should be on every link. Google says utm_creative_format and utm_marketing_tactic are not currently reported in Analytics (Google, URL builders). This builder adds utm_id, utm_term and utm_content as options.
What is the difference between source and medium?
Source is the site or platform the click came from, such as facebook or mailchimp. Medium is the kind of traffic, such as social, email or cpc. Putting the platform in the medium, or the kind of traffic in the source, gives a pair that GA4 often cannot file.
Are UTM values case sensitive?
Yes. Google says parameter values are case sensitive, so Facebook and facebook appear as two sources and one campaign is split across two rows. Keep everything in lower case, which this builder does by default.
Is YouTube counted as social or video in GA4?
Video. Google's channel page names YouTube as a video site, and its source list puts youtube, youtube.com and m.youtube.com in the video category only. An unpaid YouTube link lands in Organic Video and a paid one in Paid Video. Tag it youtube / social and the medium sends it to Organic Social instead, because the social rule is checked first.
What is the AI Assistant channel?
A channel Google added for visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Grok. GA4 gives it when the medium is ai-assistant, which it sets itself when the referring site is on its list of AI assistants. You do not normally tag links with it.
Should I tag internal links on my own site?
No. A tagged link between two of your own pages starts a new session and replaces the original source. Add your domain under Fine tune, "Your own domain", and the builder warns you before you make that mistake.
Do UTM links affect SEO?
No. A tagged link neither helps nor harms rankings. The only care needed is internal use, where tagged copies of your own pages could be crawled; canonical tags usually deal with that.
Can I use UTM links on Instagram and TikTok?
Yes, wherever the link is clickable: the link in bio, story links and link in bio pages. Captions on both do not make links clickable, so a tag there does nothing.
Do I need UTM tags on Google Ads?
Usually not. With auto tagging on, GA4 reads the campaign from Google Ads itself and files it from the details Google Ads passes on. Tag by hand only if auto tagging is off, and then use google / cpc.
Is anything sent to you when I use this?
No. The links, the channel check and the GA4 rows you paste or upload are handled in your browser with no request to any server. Nothing reaches us unless you ask us to email you the result.
Who built this
Our channels
If you would rather watch than read
Travel, food and influencer content from our founders, and the channel where the long form work lives.
The agency channel. UGC (user generated content) examples, client work and finished campaign videos.
What we tag, and why
Three pieces we filmed, each behind a tagged link
Tagging tells you which content earned the click. This is the content side of the same job: UGC (user generated content) and paid social videos made by our team for brands.
Featured UGC portfolio
Content worth tagging
Tracking, done for you
Would you rather someone else kept the tags straight?
We set the naming rules, tag every post we publish and send a monthly report in plain English.
- One tagging convention for every channel you use
- GA4 set up so campaigns land in the right channel
- A monthly report that says which posts earned the clicks
Client reviews
What our clients say.
Swipe for more reviews
“Velena Lifestyle have been a breath of fresh air for our social media accounts. Their professionalism and knowledge have supported us massively.”
“Fantastic service. Been a client for 3 years now and have seen fantastic results, increased viewers, followers and viral videos. Copywriting was on point and has been used in magazines like Conde Nast, Timeout and more.”
“Velena was a pleasure to work with, she worked solely with the brief provided and was even ahead of her deadline. The content produced was clean, professional and on brand. We would love to work with Velena again in the very near future.”
Read every review on the reviews page.
Who set up this builder
Velena Nikolova is Creative Director and the person on camera. A lifestyle creator featured in Women's Health, she makes the content the tagged links point at. More on the about page.
Dragos Nistor handles analytics and reporting, sets the tagging convention on the accounts we run, and set the rules behind this tool. Named a LinkedIn Top Entrepreneurship Voice in 2024. More on the case studies.
The rest of the free tools
All built for the UK, all free with no sign up. Nothing here is a trial.