WHAT IS UTM_TERM?

What utm_term actually tracks

utm_term is the UTM parameter that records the keyword behind a paid-search click. Of the five standard parameters — source, medium, campaign, term, content — it is the only one designed for keyword-level attribution. When someone searches, clicks your ad, and lands on your page, utm_term tells your analytics which search term earned that visit.

A complete example: https://example.com/landing?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=search-brand&utm_term=crm+software+pricing

Read it piece by piece: the search-brand campaign, on Google, through paid search (cpc), triggered by the keyword "crm software pricing".

When to use it

• Paid search on any platform. Google Ads, Bing Ads and other PPC platforms where you bid on keywords.
• Non-Google ad platforms without auto-tagging. Wherever keyword data does not flow automatically into your analytics.
• Manual overrides. When you want the term value to differ from the raw matched query — for example, mapping close variants to one canonical term.

When not to use it

If your Google Ads account is linked to Google Analytics with auto-tagging enabled, keyword data arrives automatically and manual utm_term values are redundant — worse, they can conflict with the auto-tagged data. Check your account linkage before hand-tagging a single URL. Also skip utm_term outside paid search: stuffing keywords into email or social tags adds noise, not insight.

Formatting rules

• Lowercase everything. CRM+Software and crm+software split into two rows.
• One separator. + is the classic encoding for spaces in query strings; - reads cleanest; _ matches many databases. Never mix them in one account.
• Keep it readable. utm_term=crm+software+pricing beats utm_term=kw_48291 — a human should understand the report without a lookup table.

Draft a clean set of values for any seed keyword with the free utm_term generator before your next campaign build.