GA Asynchronous Tracking: Can Tracking Methods be split out from the HEAD Tag

Question

I'm migrating my Google Analytics from Traditional to Asynchronous tracking. I now have my general scripts located as the documentation details just before the closing tag.

Like this ...

<script type="text/javascript">
  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXXXXX-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
 (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);
  })();
</script>

Later in the page, "near" the closing BODY tag -- I programmatically push the "_addTrans", "_addItme", and "_trackTrans" methods in the methods array. Like this ...

    <script type="text/javascript">
        try {
                _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/checkout/order_confirmation.aspx']);
                _gaq.push(['_addTrans',
                  '1234',           // order ID - required
                  'Mountain View',  // affiliation or store name
                  '11.99',          // total - required
                  '1.29',           // tax
                  '5',              // shipping
                  'San Jose',       // city
                  'California',     // state or province
                  'USA'             // country
                ]);
                _gaq.push(['_addItem',
                  '1234',           // order ID - required
                  'DD44',           // SKU/code
                  'T-Shirt',        // product name
                  'Green Medium',   // category or variation
                  '11.99',          // unit price - required
                  '1'               // quantity - required
                ]);
                _gaq.push(['_trackTrans']);

        } catch (err) { }
    </script>

Is this permissible? Since they are not together as detail in the API docs, will my Ecommerce tracking still work?

Thanks

Answer 1

It works. It doesn't need to be in the same tag. You should notice that the call to _setAccount still has to be the first one run. And in your example you're firing 2 pageviews. The first one uses the default document.location.href and the other uses a custom/virtual pageview. That may not be exactly what you want, you should have a single pageview per page.