What is utm_source=bing?

Who adds it

Microsoft Advertising adds it when an advertiser turns on UTM auto-tagging. It's added with utm_medium=cpc, utm_campaign, utm_content and utm_term on text ads, keywords, Shopping campaigns and extensions.

What it means

The visit came from a paid ad served by Microsoft Advertising, on Bing or its partner sites. Organic Bing visits arrive with a bing.com referrer and no UTM tags. The same click usually carries an msclkid too.

What to do with it

Leave it in place if you run Microsoft ads. With utm_medium=cpc, GA4 puts it under Paid Search because bing is on Google's list of search sites.

How Vireo shows it

Vireo Pro's UTM campaigns card lists tagged visits by Source, Medium and Campaign, with visitors and pageviews. The tags are read from the first page of each visit, and the same tags feed revenue by source.

In the free plugin, Vireo drops the query string from page addresses, keeping only a few WordPress ones such as p and page_id, so a tagged URL counts as the same page as the untagged one. The visit is counted under the referrer it arrived with.

When a link carries utm_source with no utm_medium, as ChatGPT's do, Pro's revenue attribution takes the medium from the referrer's source group. With no referrer either, it's labelled campaign.

UTM campaigns are part of Vireo Pro. See UTM campaigns in the docs.

Sources

utm_source The site that sent traffic to your page. Microsoft Advertising sets this to Bing.

How do I add UTM tags to my landing page URL? - Microsoft Advertising

How do I add UTM tags to my landing page URL? - Microsoft Advertising

Paid Search Source matches a list of search sites AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$

Default channel group - Analytics Help