Why Google AdWords Certifications Matter

3/3/15

Google has offered some type of AdWords certification since around 2010. It has been through a few name changes and rule changes, but it continues to be a fundamental element of adding trust for clients and showing that PPC experts are indeed what they claim to be. Trusting a PPC pro with your marketing budget is a big deal. Ensuring that they have at least one verified trust element, like a Google Partner page, is the least an agency or consultant can do to help earn your trust.

There is a rampant issue with PPC Professionals, Agencies, and “Experts” using the Google Partner badge on their website, without actually being an official partner.

If you ask 10 PPC professionals about their opinion on Google Partner program, you would get a mixed reaction. Those reactions would range from believing that the program is very important to not at all important. However, if you were to look at 10 PPC professional websites, you would most likely see Google Partner badges proudly displayed on each of their websites. And that takes me to my point. Make sure that the badge is linked to an official Google Partner web page.

The one way that you can verify they are legitimate…the badge needs to be linked to their official partner page, like this: 
google partner badge

If their badge is not linked, ask why. Google provides certified users with a landing page to display their certifications, which is automatically built and hosted for them after they qualify as a partner.

On the profile page, you should see something like this:

Google AdWords Partner Website

I have always suggested to peers and colleagues to take their certification exam. For years it would cost us $50 per test, each year to maintain our certification. The tests are now free and have been for well over one year, and they only take about one hour to complete. There’s no reason not to take the exams and maintain certification. At Granular, maintaining our certifications is part of our lifestyle.

There are 5,000 of us genuine certified companies in the world. Find your partner here: https://www.google.com/partners/

 *Our badges are linked in the footer of our website, on every page.

Jordon Meyer - Granular Founder headshot

Jordon Meyer

Jordon Meyer is the Founder and CEO of Granular. With over 19 years of hands-on paid search marketing experience, he's one of the most experienced PPC experts in the Midwest and one of the few digital ad agency CEOs who actually knows the work he sells. His experience comes from both agency and client-side work, ranging from small digital agencies in Milwaukee to running the day-to-day in-house PPC on the internal marketing team at Best Buy in Minneapolis. He started Granular out of the continued demand for his expertise and the overall need for a laser-focused PPC agency that focuses on measurable results.