What a Google Ads certification does and does not tell you about a hire

When you are choosing between an employee, a freelancer and an agency for paid ads, someone will mention certification. It is a fair thing to ask about. It is also easy to read more into it than it says, so here is how I would use it.

What Google says

Google's help page on certifications says they are accessed through Skillshop, which means the person needs a Skillshop account first. A score of 80 percent or greater on the assessment is required. Each certification stays valid until it expires, which Google gives as one year, and renewing it means retaking and passing the assessment in that product area. The page also makes clear that certification is awarded to individuals, and it lists Search, Display, Video, Shopping ads and Apps as the ones that count towards a company's Partner status. You can read About Google Ads certifications yourself, and it is short.

Put plainly, a certification tells you that one named person passed an assessment, in a stated product area, within the last year.

What it does not tell you

It does not tell you whether the person understands your market, whether they can write an ad that your customers respond to, or whether they will set up the tracking so that the reports mean something. It says nothing about who owns the account, and nothing about how they communicate. Those questions decide whether the arrangement works, and a certificate answers none of them.

It also does not travel from a person to a company. A company's Partner status rests on requirements Google sets for the company, which include a minimum optimisation score, a level of ad spend across the accounts it manages and the share of its account strategists who are certified. An agency can therefore display a badge while the person who will run your account holds no current certification, and the reverse is also possible. If the hire matters to you, ask about the person, not only the company.

How I would use it

I would ask three things. Does the person hold a current certification, and when was it passed? In which product areas, and do they match the platforms you will use? And can they explain, in plain words, how they would approach your account? The third question matters most, because it is the only one that tests judgement.

I would treat a lapsed certification as a conversation, not a disqualification, and I would treat a current one as a starting point. Then I would move on to the questions that separate candidates from each other, including how they would define a result and how you could check it in your own account.

Those questions are collected in how to hire a PPC specialist or Google Ads consultant. If you want to compare a hire with a freelancer or an agency on cost, the hiring cost comparison takes your own figures and shows what each option does and does not cover.

A word about me

This site is published by Web Marketing International FZCO, which sells Google Ads management and consultancy, so I would like you to apply the same test to me as to anyone else. You can read how I describe my work on the Google Ads Consultant page of my own site, and then put these questions to me.

The wider decision, including the whole cost of each option, is set out in in-house, freelancer or agency for paid ads in the UAE.