Why Clean URLs Matter
Paste a URL and this tool removes known tracking parameters — the utm_ family, fbclid, gclid, msclkid and a dozen others — while leaving functional parameters like product IDs and page numbers intact. It lists exactly what it removed so you can confirm nothing important was stripped.
Tracking parameters accumulate silently. Click a link from an email, share it, and the tracking travels with it. Over time those tagged URLs end up in places they were never meant to be: shared on social, linked from other sites, submitted to directories, and sitting in your own sitemap.
How to Use This Tool
Paste the URL
A link copied from an email, a social post or an ad, with its tracking parameters still attached.
Read the cleaned URL
utm_ parameters and click IDs such as fbclid, gclid, msclkid and Mailchimp's mc_eid are removed; other parameters are kept.
Copy and test it
Open the clean link once to confirm the page still loads the same content.
What Gets Removed
The tool removes parameters whose only purpose is attribution. It leaves everything else alone, because a parameter you cannot identify might be doing real work.
- utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content — the standard analytics campaign tags.
- fbclid — Facebook's click identifier, appended automatically to outbound links.
- gclid, gclsrc, dclid — Google Ads and Display click identifiers.
- msclkid — Microsoft Advertising's equivalent.
- mc_cid, mc_eid — Mailchimp campaign and subscriber identifiers.
- yclid, twclid, igshid, ref, _ga and several others in the same category.
The Duplicate Content Problem
Search engines treat each distinct URL as a distinct page unless told otherwise. A page reachable at /product, /product?utm_source=newsletter and /product?fbclid=abc123 is three URLs serving identical content.
When those tagged URLs get linked externally — which happens constantly, because people copy the URL out of their address bar after clicking an email — search engines discover and may index them. Ranking signals that should have consolidated on one page get split across several.
The systematic fix is a self-referencing canonical tag on every page, which the Canonical Tag Generator produces. This tool is the manual counterpart, for when you are about to publish or submit a URL and want to be sure it is the clean one.
When to Clean a URL
- Before adding a URL to your XML sitemap — a tagged URL there is a clear duplicate-content signal.
- Before using a URL as an internal link, since internal links should always point at the canonical version.
- Before requesting a backlink or submitting to a directory, so the link earns authority for the clean page.
- Before sharing a link publicly, unless you specifically want that share tracked.
- When auditing a backlink profile, to see how many links point at tagged variants of the same page.
Tracking Parameters and Analytics Attribution
There is a real trade-off worth understanding: removing tracking parameters removes the attribution they carry. If you strip utm_source from a link before sending it in a newsletter, that traffic will appear as direct or referral rather than as your email campaign.
So the rule is directional. Keep tracking on outbound links you are actively measuring — email sends, ad destinations, campaign posts. Strip it from URLs that will live permanently somewhere: sitemaps, internal links, canonical tags, and links you ask others to publish.
If you need to build a tracked URL rather than clean one, the UTM Builder assembles it with the parameters encoded correctly.
Cleaning URLs in Bulk
For a whole list rather than a single URL, the Bulk URL Formatter normalizes hostname casing and trailing slashes across every entry, and the URL Deduplicator then collapses entries that turn out to be the same page once normalized.
This combination is the standard cleanup before regenerating a sitemap after a migration — normalize, deduplicate, then feed the result into the Sitemap Generator.
Parameters This Tool Deliberately Keeps
Anything not on the known tracking list is preserved, because removing it could break the page. A product variant selector, a page number, a search query, a language switch — all of these are functional parameters that change what the page shows.
If your site generates many functional-parameter URLs that should not be indexed individually, robots.txt and canonical tags are the right tools for that, not URL stripping. The Robots.txt Generator covers the crawl-control side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will removing tracking parameters break the page?
No. Tracking parameters are read by analytics scripts, not by the page's own logic — the page renders identically without them. The tool only removes parameters on a known tracking list and preserves everything else.
What is fbclid and why does it appear on my URLs?
It is Facebook's click identifier, appended automatically to links clicked from Facebook and Instagram. You did not add it and cannot prevent Facebook adding it, which is exactly why tagged URLs end up shared and linked.
Do tracking parameters hurt SEO?
They can, by creating duplicate URLs for the same content and splitting ranking signals. A self-referencing canonical tag on every page prevents this, which is the fix worth implementing sitewide rather than cleaning URLs one at a time.
Should I remove UTMs from links in my email campaigns?
No. Those are exactly the links that should carry tracking, since that is how the campaign gets attributed. Strip parameters from URLs that will live permanently somewhere — sitemaps, internal links, canonical tags.
Does it remove parameters my site actually needs?
No. Only parameters on a known tracking list are removed. Functional parameters like page numbers, product variants, search queries and language switches are always preserved.
Which parameters does it remove?
Known tracking parameters: the utm_ family, advertising click IDs such as fbclid, gclid, gclsrc, dclid and msclkid, and email-platform IDs such as mc_eid and mc_cid. Parameters that affect the page, such as ?id= or ?page=, are left alone.
Why clean a URL before sharing it?
Tracking parameters make links long and ugly, credit your share to someone else's campaign in their analytics, and can reveal where you found the link. A clean link is shorter and neutral.