Is there any functional difference in the way I’ll see data in Google Analytics based on the _trackPageview vs _trackEvent (non-interaction) order?
Pageview First Example:
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'Foo', "Bar", 1]);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 2, 'Biz', "Baz", 2]);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 3, 'Ugg', "Boot", 3]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gaq.push(["_trackEvent", "cat", "action", "lbl", 0, true]);
Event First Example:
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 1, 'Foo', "Bar", 1]);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 2, 'Biz', "Baz", 2]);
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 3, 'Ugg', "Boot", 3]);
_gaq.push(["_trackEvent", "cat", "action", "lbl", 0, true]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
Both should work the same for most cases.
There might be very rare corner cases where it shows differences.
eg:
Events are tied back to a page. They are always tied back to the last pageview you sent or the current page if you didn’t send any event. So in your example it would be the same. But if the _trackPageview was using a virtual page name, than the page tied to the event would be different. Very rarely the tied page matters and it will only make any difference if you were using virtual pageviews.
If you look at the “visits” metric for both they might be different. That’s a very rare corner case because when looking at events and pageviews you should always look at the Pageview/Unique Pageview or Events/Unique Events metric. The “visits” metric doesn’t make much sense when looking at hit levels because it is incremented only once per visit and only on the very first hit on that visit. Either pageview or event. So in the example above if a visit LANDS on the site the number of visits for pageview can be lower if the event is fired first.