Where should the Google Analytics code to be placed on a web page?

Google Analytics (GA) is a great way to track the visits to your website. For this You should have a GA and you can generate the Javascript code for tracking the page views.

There are 2 versions of the GA code. Synchronous and Asynchronous

GA ASYNCHRONOUS CODE SNIPPET

The default code is Asynchronous, it is given below.

<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>

Location of the Asynchronous code : code snippet should appear at the top of your web page just before the closing </head> tag.


GA SYNCHRONOUS CODE SNIPPET

<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-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

Location of the Synchronous code : code snippet should appear at the bottom of your page just before the closing </body> tag.

Please Note: Replace the xxxx-x in the code snippet with your Google Analytics Account Number.

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website's traffic and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales.


References:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
GA forum