Switching from synchronous to asynchronous code in GA

[theshortstack]

Morning all,

I'm looking to integrate GA with Webmasters tools but to do so I need to have the new asynchronous GA code implemented into my website.

Now, I'm happy to just copy and paste the new code into my site footer, but will that any effect on the data that I've already tracked? Is there any reason why this is really not a good idea?

Thanks for your help,

[Highland]

You'll probably notice your site loads a bit faster with asynchronous. With synchronous, the GA code is loaded with everything else on the page (like images CSS files, etc). If the GA script is slow in loading (which can happen from time to time) then the client browser is going to be left hanging there until it's fully loaded (as in the swirling "Working" icon is still there, even if everything else is loaded). Worse, if you have JS that waits until the page is fully loaded to do something important, it's now stuck waiting on that as well.

Asynchronous means that the client doesn't have to wait until that library is loaded. The GA stuff now happens in the background. This is why HTML5 has an async attribute.

As to data already stored, there would be no effect. The asynchronous scripts do the exact same thing as their synchronous counterparts.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Good afternoon (GMT+1 time ;-)),

The data you have already tracked in your Google Analytics will still be available after switching to the new asynchronous code. As far as I now there are no reasons why switching would be a bad idea. Because loading you're Web site even faster would already solve your problems.

Hope this helps!