UTM tagging, 2026
UTM link builder that tells you which GA4 channel your link will land in
Every other builder joins your values together and hands them back. This one runs them through Google Analytics 4's own channel rules first and tells you the answer before you publish, because a medium GA4 does not recognise sends the whole session to Unassigned and nobody finds out for a month.
Free, no sign up, nothing sent to us
The builder is free forever and works anywhere. We take clients outside the UK as well as in it. Prices are in pounds sterling and no VAT is added. If you are ordering from outside the UK your card issuer sets the exchange rate, and anything due in your own country is outside our invoice.
The builder
Pick where the link is going, then check the channel before you publish
The presets set a source and a medium that GA4 will actually classify. Change them if you need to, and the channel verdict updates as you type.
Any UTM tags already on this URL are stripped rather than doubled up.
Thirty four presets, each setting a source and medium GA4 recognises.
The platform. facebook, not Facebook Page.
The channel type. This is the one that decides your GA4 channel.
Tell us this and the tool warns you if you are about to tag one of your own internal links, which overwrites the original attribution.
Your tagged link
The destination URL and campaign name above apply to every row. Content is optional.
The part other builders skip
GA4 does not report your medium. It reports a channel it worked out from your medium
This is the single most useful thing to understand about UTM tagging, and it is why so much campaign traffic ends up in a bucket nobody looks at. Google Analytics 4 runs every session through an ordered list of rules and assigns the first channel that matches. Your raw utm_medium is stored, but the reports you actually read are built from the channel, not from the medium.
- 01A medium GA4 does not recognise lands in Unassigned
utm_medium=newsletter is the classic. It reads perfectly to a human and matches no rule, so the session is filed under Unassigned and your email campaign appears to have produced nothing. The fix is one word: email. This tool tells you before you publish rather than after the send.
- 02A source GA4 does not recognise quietly downgrades paid traffic
Set the source to facebook-page rather than facebook and your paid campaign drops out of Paid Social into Paid Other, because the Paid Social rule requires a source on Google's own social list. The detail belongs in utm_content. The tool spots this and suggests the canonical source.
- 03Existing tags are stripped, not doubled
Paste a URL you copied from somewhere that already carries UTM parameters and most builders append a second set. You end up with two campaign values on one link and GA4 takes one of them. Anything already there is removed and named.
- 04It warns about your own internal links
Tell it your domain and it flags an attempt to tag a link on your own site. Internal UTM links start a new session and overwrite the original attribution, so the visit gets credited to itself and the real source disappears.
- 05Thirty four presets that all classify
Every preset was checked against the channel rules before shipping, and none of them lands in Unassigned. Instagram bio, TikTok ad, LinkedIn newsletter, podcast mention, QR code on print, affiliate, SMS. Pick one and the source and medium are already right.
- 06Bulk mode for a campaign across many placements
One destination and one campaign name, then a line per placement. You get a table with the channel verdict on every row and a CSV to paste into a brief, which is how a real campaign actually gets tagged.
| utm_medium | GA4 channel | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
social | Organic Social | Unpaid posts, bio links, stories |
paid-social | Paid Social | Boosted posts and social ads |
cpc | Paid Search | Search ads, with a search engine as the source |
display | Display | Banner and display placements |
email | Every newsletter and broadcast. Not the word newsletter | |
affiliate | Affiliates | Affiliate and partner links |
referral | Referral | Partner sites, press, QR codes on print |
audio | Audio | Podcast reads and audio ads |
sms | SMS | Text message campaigns |
video | Organic Video | Video placements on non social video sites |
newsletter | Unassigned | Nothing. This is the most common tagging mistake |
The rules were implemented from Google's documented channel definitions and tested against twenty two known source and medium combinations before this page shipped, with zero mismatches. All thirty four presets were checked too, and none of them produces an Unassigned result.
What we tag, and why
Three pieces we filmed, all of them behind a tagged link
Tagging matters because it tells you which content earned the click. This is the content side of the same job, for brands including Headmasters and the Snaptrip Group travel portfolio. Click any to play, nothing loads until you do.
A salon visit
Filmed at Headmasters
BeautyIce cream, close up
45 seconds, built for the feed
Food and drinkA hotel room reveal
Filmed on a working stay
HotelsAll three were filmed and edited by the two of us. The full library is in the UGC portfolio.
Getting tagging right across a team
The hard part of UTM tagging is not building one link. It is that six months later, three people have tagged the same channel four different ways and the report is unreadable. Everything below exists to prevent that rather than to make a single link prettier.
Agree the vocabulary once, then never argue about it
Source is the platform, medium is the channel type, campaign is the activation. The two classic errors are mirror images: putting the platform in the medium, so utm_medium=facebook, and putting the channel type in the source, so utm_source=social. Both produce sessions GA4 cannot file. Write the agreed values into a shared sheet, and make the sheet the only place anyone gets a value from.
Check your Unassigned report monthly
In GA4 open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, then filter the session default channel group to Unassigned and add source and medium as a secondary dimension. Whatever appears there is a tagging convention somebody invented. It takes two minutes and it is the fastest way to find out that half of last quarter's email went nowhere.
Never tag your own internal links
This one causes more confusion than any other. A UTM on a link between two of your own pages starts a fresh session and overwrites where that visitor originally came from, so the person who arrived from a paid ad is recredited to your own newsletter. If you want to track internal clicks, use events rather than UTMs.
Where this stops being a tool problem
Tagging tells you which post earned the click. It cannot tell you whether the content was worth clicking, and no amount of clean attribution fixes a channel with nothing good on it. If the reporting is the part you need doing, our social media management UK plans include the tagging convention, the GA4 setup and a monthly report in plain English. If you need the number that comes after the click, the social media ROI calculator is the next tool along.
Monthly plans
When the reporting is the part you need doing
Small Business Social Pack
£149 per month
12 static posts, 1 platform, content creation done for you
View Small Business Social Pack- Most chosen
Rolling monthly, 2 months notice, no setup fees. All plans on the social media management page.
Frequently asked questions
A UTM link is a normal URL with tracking parameters added to the end. Those parameters tell your analytics where the visitor came from, which campaign sent them and which specific piece of content they clicked, so traffic that would otherwise appear as Direct is attributed properly.
Almost always because the utm_medium value matches none of Google Analytics 4's channel rules. GA4 assigns each session to the first channel whose rule matches, and a medium it does not recognise falls through every rule to Unassigned. The most common culprit is newsletter, which should be email. This tool predicts the channel before you publish.
utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign are the core three and should be on every tagged link. utm_term is mostly for paid search keywords, and utm_content labels a specific link, placement or test variant so you can tell two versions of the same campaign apart.
Source is the platform the click came from, such as facebook or mailchimp. Medium is the type of activity that delivered it, such as social, email or cpc. The two classic mistakes are mirror images: putting the platform in the medium, or the channel type in the source. Both produce sessions GA4 cannot classify.
Yes. Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as two separate sources, so one campaign appears as two rows and every figure is split. Keep everything lowercase, which this tool does by default, and keep the convention consistent across whoever else tags links.
No. A UTM on a link between two of your own pages starts a new session and overwrites the original attribution, so a visitor who arrived from a paid ad gets recredited to your own site. Use events to track internal clicks. Enter your domain in the builder and it warns you before you make that mistake.
No. Search engines ignore UTM parameters when indexing, so a tagged link neither helps nor harms rankings. The only caution is internal use, where tagged versions of your own URLs can create duplicates, which canonical tags normally resolve anyway.
Yes, on the link in bio destination rather than in the caption, because captions on both platforms do not make links clickable. Story links, Facebook posts and link in bio pages all take a clickable URL, so tag those every time.
The builder strips them and names which ones it removed. Most builders append a second set instead, which leaves two campaign values on one link. Analytics takes one of them and the other is lost, which is a hard problem to spot afterwards because the link still works.
Standard reports usually populate within 24 to 48 hours. The Realtime report confirms within minutes that a new link is tracking, which is the sensible way to test a tagged link before a campaign goes out rather than waiting a day to find out it was wrong.
Yes. Switch to bulk mode, set one destination and one campaign name, then enter a line per placement as source, medium and optional content. You get a table with the predicted channel on every row and a CSV download, which is how a campaign across several placements should actually be tagged.
No. Everything runs in your browser with no sign up, no email field and no request to any server, including the channel prediction. You can safely paste a URL for a page that has not launched yet.
Our channels
If you would rather watch than read
Velena and Dragos
Travel, food and influencer content from the two of us, and the channel where the long form work lives.
Open the channelVelena Lifestyle
The agency channel. UGC examples, client work and finished campaign videos.
Open the channel
Methodology, and what this tool cannot tell you
Where the channel rules come from. Google Analytics 4 publishes its default channel definitions as an ordered rule set, and this tool implements them: direct, cross network, the paid channels, display, the organic channels, email, affiliates, referral, audio, SMS and mobile push, with anything unmatched falling to Unassigned. The order matters, because the first matching rule wins.
How it was checked. Twenty two known source and medium combinations were tested against the implementation before this page shipped, covering every channel the tool can return, with zero mismatches. All thirty four presets were then run through the same predictor and none produces an Unassigned result.
One case worth knowing. A source of youtube with a medium of video returns Organic Social rather than Organic Video, because YouTube appears on Google's social list and the social rule is evaluated first. That is GA4's behaviour rather than an error, and our first test expected the wrong answer until we checked the rule order.
What it cannot do. It cannot see your GA4 property, so it does not know about any custom channel groups you have built, which override this behaviour in your own reports. It cannot know whether a source you have invented is used consistently elsewhere in your organisation. And it cannot tell you whether the traffic was any good, only where it will be filed.
The rest of the free tools
Ten tools, all built for the UK market, all free with no sign up and no email capture. Nothing here is a trial.
- QR code generatorTurn the link you just built into a print ready code, PNG or SVG
- Social media ROI calculatorROAS, CPC and CPA against UK benchmarks with a traffic light report
- Instagram engagement rate calculatorYour real rate against 2026 UK benchmarks, by industry and follower tier
- Free social media auditThirty six questions weighted for your kind of business, no email
- UGC rate calculatorWhat creators should charge and what brands should budget
- Best time to postPosting windows across eight platforms in UK clock time, with a heatmap
- Bio generatorEight platforms, real character limits and a truncation preview
- Hashtag generatorSix platforms, twenty six industries, restricted tags screened out
- Image converterBatch convert between JPEG, PNG, WebP and AVIF in your browser
- The whole libraryEvery free tool in one place, with new ones added regularly
Client reviews
What clients say, word for word
“Velena Lifestyle have been a breath of fresh air for our social media accounts. Their professionalism and knowledge have supported us massively.”
Sean Thompson, Head of Marketing, Snaptrip Group. Google review, 5.0.“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.”
Lauryn Middleton, Social Media Manager, Smirk. Client testimonial, October 2023.“If you want a self-starter with the ability to think strategically and minimize the time between ideation and creation, Velena is your go-to. She has done a phenomenal job with managing our UGC portfolio, curating and creating our content.”
Naila Abbasova, Enara Wellness. Google review, 5.0.Every review is reproduced word for word. Read them all on the reviews page.
The two of us
Who built this tool
Velena Nikolova
Co-Founder and Creative Director
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
Co-Founder and Business Strategist
Dragos Nistor handles analytics and reporting, sets the tagging convention on every account we run, and built the channel predictor behind this tool. Named a LinkedIn Top Entrepreneurship Voice in 2024. More on the case studies.
Tagging is the easy half of knowing what works
A clean link tells you which post earned the click. It cannot tell you whether the post was worth clicking. We have worked with 100+ brands since 2022 and run eleven accounts end to end, including the tagging convention, the GA4 setup and a monthly report in plain English. We reply within one business day, and nothing is filmed or scheduled until the brief is agreed in writing.