UTM Cleaner Script for More Accurate Attribution

We started UTM.io to help teams build more consistent and accurate UTM tracking links, so you can get accurate campaign reporting, and eventually make attribution easier. But there is a problem with UTMs. They can be shared privately, through groups of friends in a way that they were not originally intended for-

The Problem of Keeping UTMs in the URLs

As valuable as UTMs are, they get in the way if users copy-paste them. This is very common, because a regular website or app user doesn’t pay attention to the strings at the end of the URL as long as the link works. This leads to your hard work on UTM taxonomy being undermined by, for instance, your Facebook link being posted to messenger apps and clicked on again there. It could also be any other link of yours with UTM parameters posted to any messenger platform, or sent via email. You added UTMs to the link to identify traffic from the channel you first posted the link to; you didn’t add the UTMs to identify the clicks from whatever other channels your link was posted to later.

This leads to issues with attributing the links correctly.

Further, if the user does notice the string of UTMs, they may mistrust it. News reports about leaking or abusing user data have been garnering more and more attention, and whatever confuses the customer makes it more likely to lose the customer.

For a full elaboration about the problems that UTMs can cause if not removed in time, feel free to read our in-depth blog article.

The Solution of Removing UTMs right after Your Analytics Tools Collected the Tracking Information

UTMs can have all their benefits without their drawbacks if they only appear on the links that you post yourself. In other words, they work great if they get stripped from the user’s browser address bar shortly after the page loads. So we made a script that strips the UTMs from the address bar right after your analytics tools have collected the tracking information.

We call this UTM Cleaner and what it does is that it waits for tools such as Google Analytics, Segment, Amplitude, and many others. Once they’ve read the tracking parameters, we strip the UTMs from the URL.

You can see how exactly this works, along with more of our thoughts on why this is valuable, in this 5-minute screen share:

Available to Some Paid Plans

We’ve made the script available to some of our paying customers. We do all the heavy lifting, host it for you, and we even help you implement it across your website. So that all links to your website get their UTMs stripped right in time. Your channel attribution will get noticeably better. Just contact us at [email protected] and we’ll get you squared away.