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Asked: 2026-06-18T03:11:00+00:00

I want to be able to set the UTM variables manually So instead of

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I want to be able to set the UTM variables manually

So instead of having a webpage

http://mysite.net/index.html?utm_source=source&utm_medium=inbound&utm_campaign=campname

I want to be able to set these with javascript. Looking through the documentation I couldn’t find any set methods for these, only the set key methods.

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingCampaigns

I have also tried 

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/index.html?utm_source=source&utm_medium=inbound&utm_campaign=campname']);

Although as far as I can tell this doesn’t work. The only way I can now see of getting this to work will be to set these using a hash value:

ie:
http://mysite.net/index.html#utm_source=In+House&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fall+email+offers

_gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]);

Is there a better way?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    edit

    Actually it seems there IS a way to do this using GA code!

    previous answer

    I’ve needed to do this in the past as well and I could not find any way to do it on-page. I believe the only way you can really do this is by reading GA’s __utmz cookie and rewriting the cookie with the value(s) you want.

    example:

    This is what __utmz would normally look like on if you go to http://www.mysite.com with no url params (the numbers in the cookie will be different):

    URL: http://www.mysite.com

    __utmz cookie value: 97566023.1329384140.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)

    Here is what it would look like if you were to go to the URL with the values in the URL (the official way to do it):

    URL: http://mysite.net/index.html?utm_source=In+House&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fall+email+offers

    __utmz cookie value: 97566023.1329384140.1.1.utmcsr=In House|utmccn=Fall email offers|utmcmd=email

    And the cookie will have these values on subsequent page views, and you will see them sent to GA in the utmcc URL param in the request URL. So basically you can alter the __utmz cookie to the values you want. Would probably be more convenient to write a wrapper function to easily set it. Honestly, I don’t know why GA doesn’t provide a way to do this with a baked in wrapper function…

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