Live incident
Work through the checklist to capture evidence, share it with partners, and verify the remediation.
UTM governance
UTM Parameters Lost After Redirect
Redirect chains drop UTMs before analytics fires, so every downstream report goes blank.
Fix library
Best for
- Teams actively debugging missing UTMs
- Escalations that need action steps
- Hand-offs between media buyers and engineers
Use this when
Preventative QA
Use the steps block as a recurring audit so redirect or CRM changes do not break tracking again.
Related resources
Signs of the problem
UTM Parameters Lost After Redirect usually shows up as a reporting mismatch before anyone notices the redirect itself. Campaigns start landing in (direct)/(none), channel breakdowns fragment, and internal teams begin arguing over whether the problem lives in ads, analytics, or the landing page.
Typical warning signs include tagged links that look correct in the ad platform but arrive clean on the final destination, dashboards that suddenly lose campaign segmentation after a domain or tracker change, and partner or CRM records that no longer match what media buyers launched.
If several teams touch the same link path - ads, tracker, cloaker, landing page, CRM, analytics - assume the issue is structural until proven otherwise.
How to prove it
You prove UTM loss by comparing the original campaign URL against the final resolved URL and the values your analytics or CRM actually received. That means you need evidence from the redirect path, not just screenshots of a landing page.
Start with Redirect Checker to capture each hop, then compare the last URL against the canonical tagged version you expect from UTM Builder or the broken live link decoded in UTM Decoder.
Once the before-and-after URLs are documented, stakeholders can stop debating whether the problem exists and focus on the hop or page that actually removed the parameters.
- Save the original launch URL before testing; a cleaned-up copy will hide the failure.
- Record the exact hop where the query string changes or shrinks.
- Compare the resolved URL with what analytics, CRM, or downstream payloads actually store.
Common root causes
Most cases fall into one of three buckets: redirect rules that rebuild URLs, landing pages or middleware that trim unknown parameters, or downstream systems that never store what they received.
The fastest investigations label the failure by owner: tracker/cloaker, landing-page template, CMS or CDN layer, or analytics/CRM ingestion. That makes the next action obvious.
- Shortened links remove everything after the question mark.
- CMS canonical plugins drop query strings for SEO 'purposes'.
- Security filters reject parameters containing certain keywords.
- Teams copy preview URLs for approvals and never re-add UTMs.
- Smartlinks or GEO routers whitelist only a subset of incoming parameters.
How to fix it
Fix the specific owner of the breakage, then retest the full path with the same tagged URL until the final page and downstream systems preserve every required parameter.
Do not stop at the landing page. If the page keeps the UTMs but analytics, CRM, or callbacks still lose them, the fix is only partial.
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Capture the redirect path
Record the full chain with Redirect Checker and confirm each hop preserves UTM parameters, casing, and separators.
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Decode the final URL
Open the resolved destination in UTM Decoder and compare it against the link you expected to launch.
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Repair the owner of the break
Update the redirect rule, landing-page template, smartlink allowlist, or CMS logic that removed the query string.
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Rebuild the canonical template
Use UTM Builder to publish the correct tagged URL and give every stakeholder one approved version to reuse.
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Retest downstream systems
Check analytics, CRM storage, and any callback or server-side workflow to confirm the fixed parameters survive beyond the landing page.
Use these diagnostic pages
These pages cover the core diagnostic path: trace the loss, inspect the broken URL, rebuild the correct template, and compare the fixed result against the original issue.
If you need the more narrative diagnosis layer before applying fixes, pair this page with the knowledge-base article on UTM parameters lost after redirect.
Redirect Checker
Document every hop and prove exactly where the query string changes or disappears.
Open tool >UTM Builder
Publish one clean tagged template so teams stop relaunching with improvised URLs.
Open tool >UTM Decoder / Encoder
Decode live URLs quickly and compare the broken version against the intended template.
Open tool >Conclusion
This page should end with a concrete answer: where the UTM loss happens, which team owns the fix, and which canonical tagged URL everyone should use going forward.
Once the issue is fixed, save the broken and corrected examples, attach the redirect evidence to your runbook, and make redirect-plus-UTM QA part of every launch checklist.