URL Tracking Parameters: The Complete List (utm, fbclid, gclid & More)
Every major tracking parameter in one table — who plants it, what it tracks, and whether it's safe to strip. The reference behind our URL cleaner.
Ever wondered why a link someone shared is three lines long? Everything after the ? that isn't selecting content is usually tracking: parameters bolted on so an analytics platform, an ad network, or an email tool can follow the click. This page is the reference list — who plants each parameter, what it does, and whether removing it is safe. (Spoiler: for everything listed here, it is. Want them gone? Paste any link into our free URL cleaner.)
Campaign tags — the utm family
The oldest and most common breed, read by Google Analytics (and imitated by Matomo and publishers):
| Parameter | What it records |
|---|---|
utm_source | Where the link was placed (newsletter, twitter, partner site) |
utm_medium | The channel type (email, cpc, social) |
utm_campaign | The campaign name |
utm_term / utm_content | The paid keyword / the ad variant clicked |
utm_id | A campaign id tying it all together |
mtm_* | Matomo's equivalents of the above |
itm_* | "Internal" campaign tags some publishers use for on-site promos |
Campaign tags describe how the link travelled, never what it opens — remove them and the same page loads.
Ad-click IDs — one ID per click, tied to you
Click identifiers are more personal than utm tags: each value is unique to your click, minted so the platform can match the visit back to your ad profile.
| Parameter | Planted by |
|---|---|
gclid, wbraid, gbraid, dclid | Google Ads / DoubleClick (the *braid pair exists to keep tracking working around Apple's App Tracking Transparency) |
fbclid | Facebook — appended to nearly every outbound link |
msclkid | Microsoft Ads |
twclid | X (Twitter) Ads |
ttclid | TikTok Ads |
li_fat_id | |
igshid, igsh | Instagram share tracking |
yclid, ysclid | Yandex |
srsltid | Google Merchant listings |
epik |
Email-marketing IDs — these identify you, not the campaign
The quiet ones. When a newsletter link carries mc_eid=abc123, that value is your subscriber ID — anyone you forward the link to inherits it, and any bookmark keeps it.
| Parameter | Planted by |
|---|---|
mc_eid, mc_cid | Mailchimp (recipient + campaign) |
mkt_tok | Marketo |
_hsenc, _hsmi, __hssc, __hstc, __hsfp | HubSpot |
vero_id, vero_conv | Vero |
oly_anon_id, oly_enc_id | Omeda |
__s | Drip |
ml_subscriber, ml_subscriber_hash | MailerLite |
_bhlid | Beehiiv |
vgo_ee | ActiveCampaign |
Stripping these isn't just tidiness — it de-personalizes the link before you save or share it. Firefox ships most of this group in its own strip list for exactly that reason.
Analytics decorators and the per-site grey zone
_ga and _gl (Google Analytics cross-domain linking), spm (Alibaba) and _openstat (Yandex) round out the universally safe list.
Then there's the grey zone: ref, si, s, t, source, from. On YouTube or Spotify, ?si= is share tracking; on another site, ?si= might select content. On Reddit, ?ref= is tracking; on plenty of sites it routes. No responsible cleaner strips these everywhere — browser vendors scope them per site (our cleaner's "site-specific deep clean" option applies Brave's per-site rules for exactly this group).
What should never be stripped
Two families look like tracking and are anything but:
- Signed URLs — S3 downloads (
X-Amz-Signature), SharePoint shares, magic-login and unsubscribe links sign the whole query string. Remove anything and the link 403s. - Content selectors —
?id=,?q=,?page=,?t=(a YouTube timestamp),?tag=(a blog filter). One character away from a tracker, completely functional.
That's why a safe cleaner works from a closed list of known trackers instead of stripping whatever looks suspicious — and skips signed links entirely.
Cleaning them out
- One link at a time: paste it into our free URL cleaner — it strips everything on this page's safe lists, right in your browser.
- Your whole bookmark library: the Bookmark Maestro extension has a Tracking Parameters doctor that scans your saved Chrome bookmarks with these same rules, previews exactly what would be removed (struck through, per bookmark), rewrites in bulk, and keeps an undo. See how to remove tracking parameters from your bookmarks.
FAQs
Q: Are tracking parameters dangerous?
A: Not dangerous, but they are a privacy leak and a clutter source. Click IDs and email IDs uniquely identify your click or your inbox, travel with the link when you share or bookmark it, and make otherwise-identical URLs look different.
Q: Does removing tracking parameters ever break a link?
A: Not for the parameters on this page's safe lists — they describe the campaign, not the page. What does break links is stripping from signed URLs (downloads, logins, unsubscribes) or guessing by pattern; a safe cleaner uses a closed list and skips signed links entirely.
Q: Why do the same articles appear twice in my bookmarks?
A: Usually tracking parameters: you saved the same URL once clean and once with ?utm_source= from a newsletter. Chrome treats them as different bookmarks. Cleaning the parameters (and then deduplicating) collapses them.