Those involved directly with analytics always have the same conversation - "Where should the analytics code be placed?" Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting are in pursuit of a formal answer and have tested the placement of the same analytics code within the top and bottom of a web page. Check out the detailed post on testing analytics code placement here.

Enge and his team are suggesting that if page load time is fast (total page load time of under 3 or 4 seconds), then javascript code should be kept at the bottom. This will remove any risk related to analytics vendor downtime. According to the post, "The small loss of data you see in this scenario should not be a significant factor in the value of your analytics data."

If your page load time is a bit slower however (4 seconds or more), consider placing your analytics Javascript at the top of your web page. "Your data loss will be larger, and also the nature of the lost data may start to differ."

Good advice!