Why are the custom campaign parameters in Google Analytics so long?

Question

Adding several Google Analytics custom campaign parameters can make URLs very long.*

For example, in Google's own examples:

http://www.example.com/?utm_campaign=spring&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=exampleblog
http://www.example.com/?utm_campaign=spring&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter1
http://www.example.com/?utm_campaign=spring&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter1&utm_content=toplink

Are there shorter alternatives that GA will pick up?

_{* In some implementations, this can be bad for user experience, and could even decrease the likelihood of being shared.}

Answer 1

You can, if you are willing to add some additional code to your website. You need to call _setAllowAnchor(true) and add the parameters to a hash query. Here's a proof of concept:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-XX']);
_gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', 'true']); // tell GA to read params from hash
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gaq.push(function(){
    history.pushState("", document.title, window.location.pathname); // remove hash
});

var campaign = "spring";
var medium = "email";
var source = "source";
var content = "content";

// add params to hash, if some condition is true
if (true) {
    window.location.href = "#utm_campaign=" + campaign + "&utm_medium=" + medium + "&utm_source=" + source + "&utm_content=" + content;
}

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

Answer 2

No, there are no alternatives as of yet, sinceutm_source and utm_medium are required.