What do the parts of a tagged link mean?
Each tag is a label, joined to the link after a question mark and separated from the next by an ampersand. Google Analytics Help ("URL builders: Collect campaign data with custom URLs") says three should always be used, utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, with utm_term and utm_content available for more detail.
The medium matters more than it looks. Google Analytics 4 sorts visits into channels such as Email, Organic Social and Paid Social partly by the medium, so a link tagged medium=email lands in the Email channel, while one tagged medium=newsletter may land in "Unassigned".
Which links need tagging?
Any link you place yourself that Google cannot label on its own. That means links in emails, in social bios and posts, on QR codes for flyers and shop windows, and the website link on your Google Business Profile. Many email tools, Mailchimp among them, can add the tags automatically when you switch on their Google Analytics setting.
Google Ads links do not need them. Auto-tagging, switched on in the account settings, passes the click details to Google Analytics by itself (Google Ads Help, "About auto-tagging"). Never tag links between pages of your own website: Google Analytics Help warns this overwrites where the visitor really came from.
What did tagging show a Noosa boutique about its newsletter? (example figures)
A clothing boutique in Noosa with an online shop sends a fortnightly newsletter, posts on Instagram and runs a small Meta campaign. Before tagging, Google Analytics put most of its online sales under "Direct". After a month with every link tagged:
| Session source / medium | Sessions | Purchases | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| mailchimp / email | 640 | 29 | $4,350 |
| instagram / social (bio link) | 410 | 6 | $870 |
| facebook / paid_social | 1,150 | 11 | $1,540 |
| google_business_profile / organic | 220 | 9 | $1,260 |
The newsletter, which the owner had nearly dropped as old-fashioned, turned out to be the shop's best seller at $150 per order, and it costs a subscription fee rather than a media budget. The Meta campaign brought the most visits and less revenue than the email. The owner moved effort from Instagram posting to a weekly newsletter.
What breaks UTM reporting?
Inconsistency. The values are case sensitive, so Facebook and facebook become two rows. "spring_launch" and "Spring Launch 2026" become two campaigns. Write the names down once, in lower case, and copy them every time. A typo or a stray space breaks a tag without any warning, so test each new link once: click it yourself and check that the visit appears under the right source in Google Analytics' Realtime report.
How do tagged links show up in CoraVision?
CoraVision gets cleaner channels from tagged links. It reads Google Analytics 4 every night once connected, including visits by channel, purchases and revenue, so a properly tagged newsletter is credited with its sales in the numbers Cora works from. Mabel, the Mailchimp specialist, teaches the Mailchimp lessons in CoraVersity, and the tags themselves you set up in your own accounts.
Questions
Will customers see the tags in the link?
Yes, in the address bar after they click, and they do no harm there. If a long tagged link looks messy on a printed flyer, put it behind a QR code or a short link from a link shortener; the tags still arrive with the visitor.
Is there a free tool that builds tagged links?
Google's Campaign URL Builder does it: fill in the website address, source, medium and campaign, and it writes the link. A simple spreadsheet of the names you use is worth keeping beside it, so the same newsletter is never tagged two different ways.