Enter the page URL and the source, medium and campaign name. You get a tagged link that Google Analytics attributes to the right campaign every time.
Paste the page you are sending people to, then fill in the source (where the link lives: newsletter, linkedin, google), the medium (the type of traffic: email, social, cpc) and the campaign name. Add a term for paid keywords and a content value if you are testing two links in the same place. Press Generate and copy the URL. Keep every value lowercase and use the same spelling every time, because GA4 treats Email and email as two different sources.
Without UTM parameters, most of your marketing shows up in Google Analytics as direct or as a generic referral, and you cannot tell which newsletter, post or ad brought the customer. Tagged links put the source and campaign on every click, so you can see what earned sign-ups rather than what earned visits. It is the difference between guessing at a channel and knowing.
Source is the specific site or sender: newsletter, linkedin, a partner's name. Medium is the category: email, social, cpc, referral. GA4 groups channels by medium, so keep the medium values standard.
No. A UTM link clicked inside your site starts a new session with a new source and breaks the original attribution. Use them only on links that come from outside.
Not if the tagged URLs are not indexed. Keep them out of your sitemap and internal links, and add a canonical tag on the page so Google folds any tagged version into the clean URL.