🔍 Overview
Search Atlas includes an Auto-UTM Tagger feature that automatically appends UTM parameters to your Google Ads URLs. While this saves time for most campaigns, it can conflict with UTM parameters you have already set manually — causing your custom values to be overwritten or corrupted.
This article explains why this happens, how to identify the issue, and the steps you can take to protect your custom tracking setup.
⚠️ Why This Happens
There are two common root causes for UTM parameters being overridden in Google Ads:
- Auto-UTM Tagger is enabled: When this feature is active, Search Atlas automatically injects UTM parameters (including utm_campaign) into your ad URLs. If you have already defined these parameters manually, the auto-tagger will overwrite them.
- Malformed URL Prefix or ValueTrack parameters: In some cases, the Google Ads URL Prefix field may be populated by OTTO PPC with an incorrectly formatted value. This can corrupt the existing query string — especially if the first query parameter in your URL is not a UTM parameter.
🛠️ How to Stop Search Atlas from Overriding Your UTM Parameters
- Disable the Auto-UTM Tagger for affected campaigns. Navigate to your campaign settings inside Search Atlas, locate the Auto-UTM Tagger toggle, and turn it off. This prevents Search Atlas from injecting or modifying any UTM values on those campaigns.
- Review your Google Ads URL Prefix field. Go to the campaign or account settings in Google Ads and check the Tracking Template or Final URL Suffix field. Remove any values that were inserted by Search Atlas if they conflict with your existing UTM setup.
- Verify the order of your query parameters. If your destination URL contains non-UTM query parameters before your UTM parameters (for example,
?ref=homepage&utm_campaign=spring), restructure the URL so that UTM parameters come first. This reduces the risk of corruption caused by the auto-tagger's parsing behaviour. - Re-enter your custom UTM values in Google Ads. After disabling the auto-tagger and cleaning up the URL Prefix, manually re-enter your utm_campaign, utm_source, utm_medium, and any other custom parameters directly in Google Ads to ensure they are preserved.
- Publish and verify the change reached Google Ads. After saving your settings in Search Atlas, confirm the update was applied successfully inside Google Ads. Navigate to your campaign in the Google Ads interface and check that your custom UTM values appear correctly in the Final URL or Tracking Template. Do not rely solely on the success message in Search Atlas — always verify in Google Ads directly.
✅ Best Practices for UTM Management
- Use either Search Atlas Auto-UTM Tagger or manual UTM parameters — do not use both at the same time for the same campaign.
- If you manage campaigns for multiple clients or accounts, audit each account's URL Prefix field after enabling or disabling the auto-tagger.
- When using OTTO PPC to generate landing page URLs, check that no unexpected tokens or keys have been appended to the destination URL before publishing.
- Keep a record of your custom UTM parameter values outside of Search Atlas (for example, in a spreadsheet) so you can quickly restore them if they are ever overwritten.
💬 Need More Help?
If you have followed the steps above and your UTM parameters are still being overridden, or if you are unsure which setting is causing the conflict, our team is ready to help. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.