According to John Mueller, lead analyst at Google, the presence of UTM-parameters in a link does not mean that it becomes unnatural.
Mueller's statement aims to dispel the long-standing and enduring myth that search engines may consider (or even consider by default) as unnatural links that contain UTM-parameters. The analyst claims that Google uses completely different, much more complex mechanisms to determine the naturalness of a link.
Moreover, Google often completely ignores the part of the link that begins after the «?» and adding UTM-parameters to a link does not automatically make it unnatural in the eyes of a search engine. Conversely, if you remove parameters from an unnatural link, it will not become natural from this. According to Mueller, «They're just URL-parameters.»
This is not the first analyst's statement aimed at debunking tenacious myths. So, earlier John Mueller said that changing the publication date does not affect the ranking in any way.