(Mildly) improving Google Analytics' JS Embed

Celebrity that I am, I use Google Analytics to figure out exactly how many times I’ve visited my own website in a given day. The interface is surprisingly good (given that it’s a Google app), and generally I’m happy with the service. Also, it’s free (assuming that you don’t worry about giving Google even more of your data). Yay free.

The JavaScript that Google suggests using to embed their tracking code, however, is a bit wasteful. Take a look:

<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("[YOUR TRACKING NUMBER]");
    pageTracker._trackPageview();
  } catch(err) {}
</script>

I understand why they need to differentiate SSL requests, but passing a cobbled-together string through unescape before feeding it to document.write is a bit much, don’t you think? Also, injecting pageTracker and gaJsHost as new global variables isn’t particularly friendly.

Given that I can make the assumption that this site is unencrypted, let’s change the code a bit to fix these two points:

<script
  type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
  /*globals _gat */
  try {
    ( function ( $g ) {
      $g._getTracker("[YOUR TRACKING NUMBER]")._trackPageview();
    }( _gat ) );
  } catch ( err ) {}
</script>

That’s a little better. And it even JSLints.