UTM parameters have been a popular way to track performance of online marketing campaigns. It does this with the help of parameters that added to the URL to provide the context information of the clicks that lead an user to a website.
By default, for Google feeds, the app attached some UTM parameters to the product link in the feeds. For example let's look into this product link.
We have
utm_source=google
utm_medium=organic
utm_campaign=File feed by David (feed name)
utm_content=Bones Speed Cream (product name)
(The Product URL template can be modified, meaning these parameters can be freely updated for merchant tracking need)
The default UTMs parameter are to serve the following purposes in reports
The traffic and sales will be attributed to the correct source (identified by utm_source) and correct feed (identified by the utm_campaign parameter)
It's important to differentiate the difference between 2 sources of traffic from Google listings
This will be correctly recorded as "organic". As the product links will be served "as-is" in free Google Shopping listing, the utm_medium=organic will correctly attribute free listing clicks into the "organic" category.
The correct free listing attribution comes with trade-offs. Without extra configuration you might see paid traffic reported as "Organic" in Google Analytics
This can be fixed by adding final URL suffix in Google Ads campaign setup. The utm_medium can be overridden by adding this suffix:
utm_medium=paid
Since suffix will only be added for traffic going through Google Ads, the reports in Google analytics will work correctly for both free listing and paid clicks.
The utm_content is set to the product name by default so merchant can drill down the reports by products, to find out which products get the most traffic and/or convert better.
UTM parameters have become a standard so the default utm parameters will mostly work out of the box for other market place. Merchants can always customize the utm parameters by switching to manually edit the product URL template.
