UTM Builder for Pinterest

Quick answer: for an ordinary pin, tag the link utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=social and name the campaign after the post or product. Google Analytics 4 then files the visit under Organic Social, because "pinterest" is on Google's own list of social sites. For a Pinterest ad use utm_medium=paid_social (or cpc) and it lands in Paid Social. Keep every value lower case: GA4's channel rules ignore case, but its reports show "Pinterest" and "pinterest" as two different sources.

How to use it

Paste the address of the page your pin links to, choose what the link is for — an organic pin, an ad, your profile or a board — and add a campaign name. The tracked link appears as you type, with the channel GA4 will put the visit in and the reason, taken from Google's rules. Testing two or three pin designs for the same post? Put one name per line in the last box and you get a link each, identical except for utm_content, so Analytics can tell you which design sent the visits.

What each UTM value is for

• utm_source — where the visit came from: pinterest. Use exactly that. Google's list of social sources includes pinterest, pinterest.com and twenty country domains such as pinterest.co.uk — but not pin.it, Pinterest's own short-link domain.
• utm_medium — what kind of traffic: social for a free pin, paid_social or cpc for an ad. GA4 treats a medium containing "cp", or starting with "paid", as paid.
• utm_campaign — which effort: the post, the product, the season (fall-recipes, black-friday). Without it, every tagged pin ends up in one "(not set)" row.
• utm_content — which version: the pin design or the board. This is how you compare two designs pointing at the same page.
• utm_term — the keyword the pin is aimed at. Optional; useful if you design pins around specific searches.

How Google Analytics 4 decides the channel

GA4 checks each visit against its default channel rules in a fixed order and files it under the first one it matches. The paid channels come before the organic ones, so pinterest with a paid medium is Paid Social even though "pinterest" alone would also match Organic Social. Three rules decide almost every Pinterest link:

• Paid Social — the source is on Google's list of social sites and the medium matches its paid pattern (^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$).
• Organic Social — the source is on the list of social sites, or the medium is one of social, social-network, social-media, sm, social network, social media.
• Paid Other — a paid medium with a source that is not on any of Google's lists. This is where pin.it with cpc ends up: an ad you paid for, reported as something else.

The builder runs every rule on Google's page against your values, in the order GA4's own Admin lists the default channel group (Admin › Data display › Channel groups), and tells you when a link matches more than one. Google's help page lists the channels alphabetically; the order is the part that matters when a value fits two rules.

Mistakes that split or lose Pinterest traffic

• Mixed capitals. Pinterest on some pins and pinterest on others: same channel, two rows in every report. Lower case, always.
• A paid medium on a free pin. utm_medium=cpc on an organic pin files free traffic as paid, and your organic numbers look worse than they are.
• Spaces. They become %20 in the link. Use hyphens: spring-recipes.
• Tagging internal links. UTM tags belong on links that bring people to your site. Tagging a link from one of your own pages to another starts a new "visit" and wipes out where the reader really came from.
• Very long links. Pinterest refuses a link longer than 2,048 characters (its API's own limit). The builder tells you when you are over it.

After the link: is the pin working?

A tracked link tells you what a pin sent to your site. It cannot tell you whether the pin is being shown at all, or what the keywords you are aiming at are worth. For that, check the keyword first with the free Pinterest keyword checker, and read the PinPinterest blog on what earns saves.

FAQ