Why does the Google Analytics script I add to my webpage need to come in two script blocks?

<script type="text/javascript">
    var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
    document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    try {
        var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxx-xx");
        pageTracker._trackPageview();
    } catch (err) { } 
</script>

Why does the Google Analytics script I add to my webpage need to come in two script blocks?

<script type="text/javascript">
    var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
    document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    try {
        var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxx-xx");
        pageTracker._trackPageview();
    } catch (err) { } 
</script>

• google-analytics
• javascript

2 Answers 2

The first script in your quote above writes a new <script> loading tag into the document. The second block has dependencies that are loaded by that dynamically written script tag, so the browser has to have a chance to load and parse the script before the second block runs. If everything was in one block, the script loading wouldn't take place until the first script section ended.

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