Where to find utm_content and utm_term in GA4
Updated by the UTM Builder team at Limner.
They do arrive, just not where you’d expect. In GA4, utm_content becomes the Manual ad content dimension and utm_term becomes Manual term, and neither one is among the options the Traffic acquisition report shows by default.
The name of each dimension
Google’s help docs list, for each parameter, an event-scoped, a session-scoped and a first-user dimension. To see which creative or keyword started each visit, use the session-scoped one:
| Parameter | Session-scoped dimension in GA4 |
|---|---|
utm_content | Session manual ad content |
utm_term | Session manual term |
utm_source_platform | Session manual source platform |
The first-user versions show what brought the person in on their first visit, and they answer a different question.
Step by step in Explore
- Open Explore and create a blank exploration using the Free form technique.
- Under Dimensions, click + and import Session campaign, Session manual ad content and Session manual term.
- Under Metrics, import Sessions and the key events that matter to you.
- Drag the campaign and the ad content to Rows and the metrics to Values.
- Set the date range. Today’s data can take 24 to 48 hours to finish processing.
If your account has permission to customize reports, you can also add these dimensions to the dimension picker in the Traffic acquisition report, so the team doesn’t have to build the exploration every time. If the customize option doesn’t appear, the account doesn’t have that permission.
If the ad runs on Google Ads
With auto-tagging on, source, medium and campaign come from the gclid. Even so, Google’s help docs say that utm_content and utm_term added to the URL still go to Manual ad content and Manual term.
One detail that trips people up: utm_term={keyword} returns the keyword in your account that matched the search, not what the person typed. And in campaigns without keywords, such as Performance Max and Dynamic Search Ads, Google Ads says {keyword} comes back blank.
Why nothing might show up
- The parameter wasn’t in the link. With no value, the dimension shows (not set).
- The value was spelled differently across creatives.
Bannerandbannerbecome two rows. - You used
utm_creative_formatorutm_marketing_tactic. Google notes that, for now, these two aren’t reported in GA4 properties. - The date range only includes today and the data is still being processed.