URL parameters
Key-value pairs after a question mark in a URL; they frequently create duplicate content and crawl waste when they do not change page…
AnalyticsCampaign tagging
UTM parameters
Query string parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign and others) appended to URLs so analytics can attribute traffic to a campaign.
In full
UTMs are essential for attribution but hazardous for SEO when used on internal links or shared publicly, because each tagged variant is a distinct URL that can be crawled, indexed and split from its canonical. Rules of thumb are: never tag internal links, always self-canonicalise, keep a documented naming convention, and strip tracking parameters from sitemaps. Tagged URLs also fragment analytics when conventions drift between teams.
Example
A newsletter link tagged `?utm_source=news` is shared on a forum, and Google begins indexing the tagged duplicate.
Related terms
Canonicalization
The process by which a search engine groups duplicate or near-duplicate URLs into a cluster and picks one representative URL to index and…
Attribution
Assigning credit for a conversion across the touchpoints that preceded it, using rules such as last click, first click, or data-driven…
Google Analytics 4
Google's event-based analytics platform, which replaced Universal Analytics in July 2023 and models sessions and users from event streams.
Duplicate content
Substantively identical or near-identical content available at more than one URL, within a site or across sites.