Question

Unfortunately, this may not be a valid Code-Golf question as it is likely Javascript only; however, since this is likely to be the only useful-in-the-real-world code-golf contest I’m going to go ahead and post it.

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The Google Analytics Asyncronous Tracking snippet is used by many websites.

The script goes a little something like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
  _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>

Winner will be determined by the shortest RAW DEFLATE (there is a difference between HTTP 1.1 DEFLATE (aka zlib) and RAW DEFLATE) compressed code by byte-count that will load and initialize Async Google Analytics on a page.

In the case of a tie, winner will be determined by raw character count. If it we still have a tie we’ll decide by last edit/time submitted.

Some Rules:

• The gaq || [] check is not required and should be removed.
• must be protocol “aware” (http vs https).
• must not pollute the global namespace (except for the _gaq var).
• must be copy-pastable to any (X)HTML document, i.e., not dependent on the page’s markup.
• must work in all A-Grade browsers.
• This does NOT have to pass JSLINT or any HTML validators.
• must set the async flag.
• must use this deflator for the byte count of the deflate-compressed output.

Tip:

• Understand the basics of the DEFLATE algorithm. And more importantly, LZ77 compression.

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UDPATE 216/275

Since my original version has been beaten I’ll go ahead and post it here:
Note: this has a bug where async gets set to false for all “http” requests

(function(d,t,g){_gaq=[["_setAccount","UA-XXXXX-X"],["_trackPageview"]];g=d.createElement(t);g.src=(g.async=location.protocol[5]?"//ssl":"//www")+".google-analytics.com/ga.js";(t=d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(g,t)})(document,"script")

Answer 1

Updated with versions tested in FF3.6, Opera10, Chrome6, MSIE8:

194/270: with async, with getElementsByTagName cached

(_gaq=document.createElement("script")).src=(/^....s/.test(location)?"//ssl":"//www")+".google-analytics.com/ga.js",(_gaq.a=_gaq.async=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(_gaq,_gaq.a),_gaq=[["_setAccount","UA-XXXXX-X"],["_trackPageview"]]

192/297: with async, no cache

(_gaq=document.createElement('script')).src=(/^....s/.test(location)?'//ssl':'//www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js',_gaq.async=document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(_gaq,document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]),_gaq=[['_setAccount','UA-XXXXX-X'],['_trackPageview']]

189/259: no async, with getElementsByTagName cached

(_gaq=document.createElement('script')).src=(/^....s/.test(location)?'//ssl':'//www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js',(_gaq.a=document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]).parentNode.insertBefore(_gaq,_gaq.a),_gaq=[['_setAccount','UA-XXXXX-X'],['_trackPageview']]

188/286: no async, no cache

(_gaq=document.createElement('script')).src=(/^....s/.test(location)?'//ssl':'//www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js',document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(_gaq,document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]),_gaq=[['_setAccount','UA-XXXXX-X'],['_trackPageview']]

184/242, no async, appendChild (no cache needed), unknown if it’s supported everywhere

(_gaq=document.createElement('script')).src=(/^....s/.test(location)?'//ssl':'//www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js',document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.appendChild(_gaq),_gaq=[['_setAccount','UA-XXXXX-X'],['_trackPageview']]

Credits:

• casablanca: /^https/.test(location)
• matyr: relative path, commas between statements, assignment to async
• some: no anonymous function and usage of _gaq, non-cacheing of getElementsByTagName, move assignment of async, /^….s/
• David Murdoch drop type="text/javascript"

Also, changing ' to " may improve compression in your HTML source if you use "” to quote tag attributes.

See comments on this post for more information

Since this post now is community wiki and the accepted answer, I removed my first attempts (you can find them in the revision history if you are interested) and only have the latest revisions visible. See the comments on this post for more information. /some