Google and Microsoft parallel tracking

Under parallel tracking the browser goes straight to your Final URL while the tracking URL is fetched separately, in the background. A redirect tracker is never in the path and never gets to hand the visitor anywhere.

On Google this is mandatory for Search, Shopping, Display, Video and Performance Max. There is no version of these campaigns where a redirect happens, so there is no tracking URL to paste.

#How the campaign is set up instead

The ad points at your landing page with parameters on it, and the tag opens the click. The campaign's Tracking tab builds the whole Final URL:

https://your-lander.example/?utm_source=google_ads&utm_medium=cpc
  &utm_campaign=spring_sale&utm_content={campaignid}&utm_term={adgroupid}
  &sub3={keyword}&sub9={device}&utm_id=CAMPAIGN_ALIAS

Every part of that matters, but one part decides whether the campaign works at all.

#utm_id is the campaign

utm_id carries the campaign's alias, and it is what the tag reads to open the visit against this campaign. Everything else on that URL is detail — cost, keyword, device — that enriches the click. utm_id is what says whose click it is.

It rides in a standard UTM field on purpose: nothing on your page looks third-party, and no ad platform strips it.

Use the Final URL the Tracking tab gives you. Pasting your plain landing page address instead is the one mistake here, and it fails silently: the traffic still arrives, the page still loads, and the click is attributed to whichever campaign sharing that page was edited most recently. Wrong offer, wrong campaign, no error anywhere.

#How you would know

You would not, until now. So UTMCAP records how each visitor was identified, and the Tracking tab tells you when this is happening:

⚠ 14 visitors in the last 7 days arrived from Google Ads with no utm_id — check the Final URL below is the one in your ad.

That count is reliable because Google and Microsoft add their own click id to the landing page URL — gclid and msclkid — and nobody types those, so nobody can forget them. An arrival carrying one and naming no campaign is definitively traffic you paid for whose identity went missing. See how a visitor was identified.

#Two fixes, and use both

1. Put the generated Final URL in the ad. That is the actual fix.
2. Add the campaign tag to the page, so the page names the campaign even if the URL loses it:

<script src="https://app.utmcap.com/t.js?k=YOUR_SITE_KEY&c=CAMPAIGN_ALIAS" async></script>

The second only works on a page one campaign uses. One page carries one tag, so it can name only one campaign — a shared page has to rely on utm_id.

#The call to action

On these campaigns use #utmcap on your button, not a pasted /out/{click_id} URL:

<a href="#utmcap">Get started</a>

{click_id} is a macro out of a tracking URL, and a tracking URL is a redirect — which never happens here, so it is deliberately left unfilled. #utmcap is the tag's own hand-off and works on every arrival. See the call to action.

#What you cannot do

Rotating landing pages. Splitting traffic between landers needs something in the path to choose between them, and under parallel tracking there is nothing in the path. The ad names one page and that is the page.

A tracking template that shares state with the page. The template is fetched on your tracking domain while the visitor is already on the landing page. Unless the two are the same site, everything the tracking domain knows is third-party to the page — and third-party is what browsers discard. The Tracking tab checks this and tells you whether a template can do anything at all for your setup.