An agency shows you a badge. A consultant lists a credential on their profile. Both look like proof, and neither means quite what most buyers assume. Here is what these qualifications actually certify, what they cost, and the one requirement inside the badge that deserves more scepticism than it gets.

This is written for the person hiring rather than the person studying. If you are trying to evaluate whether a provider knows what they are doing, the credential is a data point, not an answer.

What the Individual Credential Is

The exam covers the platform. Running an account well is a separate skill.

A google ads certification is a credential issued by Google confirming that an individual passed an assessment on the platform. The exams live on Skillshop, Google’s training hub, and they are free. There is no fee, no proctoring cost, and no barrier to entry beyond time. Anyone can create a Skillshop account this afternoon and sit one.

The mechanics are specific. You need 80% or better to pass. Each assessment allows 75 minutes. If you fail, you can retake it one day later. Certifications expire after one year, so anyone displaying one should be able to show a current date rather than a screenshot from 2021.

Many people still search for a google adwords certification, which tells you how long a rebrand takes to reach the public. Google renamed AdWords to Google Ads in 2018, and the credential name changed with it. A google adwords certification and a google ads certification are the same thing under different labels — if a provider’s site still advertises a google adwords certification, that is a sign of stale content rather than a fake credential.

A google ads certification exists in several product areas: Search, Display, Video, Shopping, and Apps, among others. A related Google Analytics credential covers measurement rather than advertising. The Google Analytics exam sits on the same platform and follows the same format. Worth noting: the Google Ads Professional certifications do not count toward the Partners badge, and no other certifications count toward that requirement either.

What the Agency Badge Is, and How It Is Earned

This is where the distinction matters. Individuals earn certifications. Only companies earn the Google Partner badge. A provider saying “our team is certified” and a provider holding Google Partner status are making different claims, and the second is harder to obtain.

Premier Partner sits above that tier and is relative rather than absolute — a firm can meet every Partner requirement and still not be a Premier Partner, because the top 3% is recalculated each year.

Read those three together and a picture emerges. The badge proves an agency handles a meaningful volume of spend, employs account strategists who have passed exams, and keeps its accounts aligned with Google’s recommendations. Those are real signals. A firm holding the badge is not a hobbyist.

The Requirement Worth Questioning

Optimization score rises when you apply Google’s recommendations.

The performance pillar is measured by optimization score, which rises when an account applies the recommendations Google surfaces in the Recommendations tab. Dismissed recommendations are excluded from the calculation used for the company requirement.

When Google announced the revamped requirements, agencies objected publicly and specifically to this. One agency principal asked, in a widely shared complaint, whether firms would now have to accept automated recommendations even where those recommendations were irrelevant to a client, or lose the badge. Another described the change as a revenue booster for Google.

That does not make the badge meaningless. It does mean the performance pillar measures alignment with Google’s preferences rather than client outcomes. An agency running a deliberately narrow, tightly controlled account for a client with limited capacity may score lower on optimization score than one that accepted every recommendation. The first agency may be doing better work.

Google itself notes that partners can review recommendations before applying them, and dismissed items can be assessed against client goals. The judgement still sits with the agency. But the incentive points one way.

What a Credential Does Not Tell You

The report is the evidence. The badge is the introduction.

An exam measures recall of platform mechanics. It does not measure whether someone can write an ad that gets clicked, choose the right match types for a small local budget, or tell a client honestly that paid search is the wrong channel for them.

Three things a certified professional may still get wrong, none of which appear on any exam:

• Tracking installed after launch rather than before. The most consequential sequencing error in paid search, and no assessment tests for it.
• Optimising toward the wrong event. An account tuned to maximise form fills will happily buy low-value unqualified ones. Knowing which conversion matters is judgement, not knowledge.
• Reporting in clicks. Anyone can pull a dashboard. Translating spend into enquiries and cost per enquiry is a different discipline.

The inverse is also true, and worth saying plainly. An uncertified operator with five years of hands-on results in your specific vertical will usually outperform a freshly certified professional with none. The credential is evidence of study. Case studies with numbers are evidence of outcomes, and a certified professional should be able to produce both.

What to Ask Instead

Four questions that reveal more than any badge.

Who owns the Google Ads account?

It should be you. If the agency builds inside their own manager account and you cannot take the history with you, you are renting results. Ask for administrative access to your own Google Ads account in writing before signing anything.

What gets tracked, and when is it installed?

Conversion tracking and Google Analytics both belong in place before the first dollar is spent. A Google Ads account that launches without it produces a first month of data nobody can act on. Ask what specifically will be tracked — calls, forms, bookings — and how each is attributed.

Show me a report for a client like me

Redacted is fine. What matters is the shape: does it show enquiries and cost per enquiry, or impressions and clicks? A provider who reports the second is measuring the wrong thing, whatever their agency credentials say.

What would make you tell me not to run ads?

The best answer is a specific one. No capacity to serve more clients. Not enough budget to sustain three months. Too little search volume in the area. A provider with no disqualifying criteria is selling rather than advising.

Our breakdown of what to demand in writing from any agency covers the scope items that belong in the agreement itself.

Where This Leaves the Badge

A fair summary: Google Partner status tells you a firm is established, handles real spend, and has staff who have passed current exams. That is worth something and it is verifiable, which is more than most agency claims manage.

What it does not tell you is whether that firm will do good work for your business specifically. The spend threshold is aggregate across all clients, so a badge-holding agency may be excellent with large ecommerce accounts and clumsy with a single-location practice. The certifications requirement covers half of account strategists, not the particular person who will handle your account, and Skillshop records expire annually.

Treat it the way you would treat a licence: necessary context, not sufficient evidence. Then ask the four questions above, and judge the answers.

If you want the mechanics of what a well-built account actually contains, our guide to Google Ads assets and what they cost uses Google’s own documentation rather than any agency’s marketing.