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UTM troubleshooting: why traffic shows as direct

When paid traffic shows up as direct, the ads usually did their job and the tags were lost on the way.

  • Open the live ad's link. Are the source, medium and campaign values there, spelled as in your standard?
  • Look for a different value in the ad platform's own parameters, which can overwrite or duplicate yours.
  • Redirects that drop the query string, such as a redirect from a short link or from the non www address.
  • Link shorteners and tracking wrappers that rebuild the address.
  • A cookie banner or a consent tool that delays the analytics tag until after the parameters are gone.

Check the checkout

  • Payment providers that send customers back to the store from another domain and start a new session.
  • Domains that are not in the cross domain list of your analytics.

Check how it is read

  • Case: the same channel can appear under several spellings. Keep one lowercase standard.
  • The report you are looking at: a default channel grouping can place correctly tagged traffic somewhere unexpected.

Fix and record

  • Fix links in a batch and write the date in the change log, so the break in the series is explained.
The UTM standard guide sets the naming rules, and the UTM builder builds links that follow them.

6 min read. Last updated 2026-10-07. Examples use made-up numbers.

This guide in numbers

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5sections
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Terms in this guide

UTM parametersKey eventAttribution window

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Measurement

A UTM standard for ad accounts that stay consistent

UTM tags are only as useful as they are consistent. One standard, applied by tooling instead of memory, keeps reports readable.

5 min read Measurement

Attribution windows explained for agency reports

Two reports on the same ads can show different results only because one used a seven day window and the other used a one day window.

6 min read Measurement

Daily, weekly, monthly: what to look at when

Most bad ad decisions are reactions to a number that is only noise at that time scale. Match the number to the cadence.

7 min read Operations

Tracking QA before launch: test the path from click to order

A campaign that tracks wrong looks like a campaign that does not work. Test the whole path with a real order before the budget goes in, and keep the evidence.

6 min read Measurement

Anomaly triage: a fixed order for checking a sudden change

When a number jumps, the first instinct is to change the ads. Check the measurement, the store and the market first, because a broken tag or a stock-out looks the same as a weak ad in a dashboard.

5 min read
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