---
title: "Labels | Grafana Labs"
description: "Descriptive tags that appear in every notification, the three places they come from, and why they matter."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

## Labels

Labels for alert rules are:

- Descriptive tags attached to each alert
- Written as a name and a value, like `severity=warning`

Labels appear in your notifications so that whoever’s responding to the alert can immediately see which system, team, or environment is affected.

## Label types

Labels on an alert rule come from three places:

[Diagram of three label types, including user-configured, query-returned, and reserved, feeding into an alert instance that determines where notifications go](label-types.svg "Diagram of three label types, including user-configured, query-returned, and reserved, feeding into an alert instance that determines where notifications go")

- Added by you (user-configured), such as `severity=warning`
- Added by the data source query (query-returned), such as `service_name=checkout`
- Added by Grafana (reserved), such as `alertname` and `grafana_folder`

## Why labels matter

[Labels](/docs/grafana/latest/alerting/fundamentals/alert-rules/annotation-label/) are a critical part of the alerting process for multiple reasons, including:

- **Notifications:** Labels appear in every notification, which helps the responder identify what’s affected without opening Grafana
- **Organization:** Labels help you filter and find alert rules in the rules list