Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2024 Poal.co

221

I realized just asking why we don't ban UTM codes doesn't make sense if you don't know what UTM codes are for? So here's a little knowledge for the people on poal unfamiliar with these little evil trackers.

“UTM” stands for “Urchin tracking module.” Which to give you some more background, Urchin Software Corporation was acquired by Google in 2005, and this is basically what we now know as Google Analytics.

In a nutshell, UTM codes are bits of text you can add to a link that tell an Analytics account more information about each link. Many marketers rely on these UTMs to identify who they are driving for the campaigns they work on.

This is what an example of a UTM link looks like;

https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=lawless&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march2012

This is what the domain looks like without the tracking identifiers

https://domain.com/landing-page?

Now adding just that little bit extra to the link may not look like much, but it answers 3 Essential Questions that you should understand.

  1. Where is the traffic coming from?
  2. How is it getting to me?
  3. Why is it coming to me?

You can use the UTM variables within the link to track general information, like how much traffic you’re getting from social media. You can use them to track the fine details also, like how much revenue you get from your Twitter bio.

There are many, many ways to track links with UTM codes and what seems like a simple amount of data can reveal quite a bit.

For example: Google Analytics will automatically tell you if your traffic comes from Facebook or Twitter. The benefit of a UTM code is being able to track your specific posts since Google Analytics doesn't break down what post on Facebook or Twitter that traffic came from. In these cases, it's best used in combination with the campaign parameter.

What you should do 1. remember the users that constantly share these links. if you read this post, i guarantee you'll start to notice just how a few users are responsible for most of the UTMs on this site. 1. remove the UTM parameters from the domain as I listed above 1. As user @hrdgj54ed pointed out, you can also pollute the UTM data by adding extra parameters.

A pollution example could be something like this

Original UTM https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=lawless&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march2012

Polluted UTM https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=instagram&utm_campaign=march2018

This is an amazing way to fight back against shills pushing propaganda on various networks. Take away their money and you'll take away their incentive to keep doing it.

I realized just asking why we don't ban UTM codes doesn't make sense if you don't know what UTM codes are for? So here's a little knowledge for the people on poal unfamiliar with these little evil trackers. “UTM” stands for “Urchin tracking module.” Which to give you some more background, Urchin Software Corporation was acquired by Google in 2005, and this is basically what we now know as Google Analytics. In a nutshell, UTM codes are bits of text you can add to a link that tell an Analytics account more information about each link. Many marketers rely on these UTMs to identify who they are driving for the campaigns they work on. This is what an example of a UTM link looks like; https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=lawless&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march2012 This is what the domain looks like without the tracking identifiers https://domain.com/landing-page? Now adding just that little bit extra to the link may not look like much, but it answers 3 Essential Questions that you should understand. 1. Where is the traffic coming from? 2. How is it getting to me? 3. Why is it coming to me? You can use the UTM variables within the link to track general information, like how much traffic you’re getting from social media. You can use them to track the fine details also, like how much revenue you get from your Twitter bio. There are many, many ways to track links with UTM codes and what seems like a simple amount of data can reveal quite a bit. **For example:** Google Analytics will automatically tell you if your traffic comes from Facebook or Twitter. **The benefit of a UTM code** is being able to track your specific posts since Google Analytics doesn't break down what post on Facebook or Twitter that traffic came from. In these cases, it's best used in combination with the campaign parameter. **What you should do** 1. remember the users that constantly share these links. if you read this post, i guarantee you'll start to notice just how a few users are responsible for most of the UTMs on this site. 1. remove the UTM parameters from the domain as I listed above 1. As user @hrdgj54ed pointed out, you can also pollute the UTM data by adding extra parameters. A pollution example could be something like this **Original UTM** https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=lawless&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=march2012 **Polluted UTM** https://domain.com/landing-page?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=instagram&utm_campaign=march2018 This is an amazing way to fight back against shills pushing propaganda on various networks. Take away their money and you'll take away their incentive to keep doing it.

(post is archived)

[–] [Sticky] • 1 pt

Code (regex) updated:

New url posted here (post link/post content/comment) will now be automatically stripped off of any utm tracking data.

[–] • 0 pt

I remove most of the utm data. It's much simpler than changing it. I prefer short URLs anyway.

[–] • 2 pts

You won't have to. Poal is now doing it for you ;)

https://poal.co/s/Poaldev/536768

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

I'm not a web guy, but the way I understand it is what follows the question mark is a list of key=value pairs which the site then parses and uses to decide how to load the page. Sometimes they are used for tracking purposes--they are simply metadata appended to the url and do not affect the functionality of the site. It's the latter case that you are talking about.

For example, if we remove them from this url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

The video will not load.

There could be dozens of such parameters in a url which might or might not affect its functionality and might or might not be used for tracking purposes, or a combination of the two.

While the user could go through trial and error by modifying the url to remove all or only non-essential parameters, this process is not as trivial as you make it out to be.

[–] • 1 pt

nah, it's not just after the ? - that just happened to be in the example that i gave.

What you are showing is the youtube link, adding the UTM parameters to it is near identical to the example i gave you however start after the v=dqw4

it's actually quite easy.

[–] • 1 pt

heres a decent guide for you to read as it shows you how to add UTMs and if you reverse it, you can remove them. All you need is to understand how they work as it's not complicated what so ever.

[–] • 0 pt

Already done it:

I wrote a regex that removes all utm_* keys and their values in url.

Check the sticky comment in this post.