The Google Ads certification, what the assessment requires, which five count toward a Partner badge and what it proves about a supplier

A Google Ads certification is an accreditation an individual earns by passing an assessment administered through Skillshop, Google own training platform. To pass you need a score of 80 per cent or better, you get 75 minutes, a failed attempt can be retaken one day later, and the certification stays valid for one year before the assessment has to be passed again. Five of the certifications count toward a company Google Partner or Premier Partner status and the Professional certifications do not. All of that is published by Google and was read on 22 October 2026.

Checked against the India geo target on its own on 22 October 2026, certified in google adwords draws 480 searches a month in India, and against the United Kingdom target on its own on the same day it draws 140 a month in the United Kingdom. Two separate country readings, never summed.

What the certification actually is

Google describes these as professional accreditations offered to individuals who demonstrate proficiency in basic and advanced aspects of Google Ads. Two words in that sentence do most of the work. It is offered to individuals, not to companies, and it measures proficiency in the product rather than results in an account. A Skillshop account is required before you can take any of the assessments.

Google also publishes what a certified person may say about it. Its guidance for communicating certification status gives an example sentence an individual may use, and it adds the constraint that matters to anybody hiring: you may only refer to yourself as certified if you personally have passed the assessment.

The numbers Google publishes about the exam

One detail in the exam rules is worth knowing before you sit it. The timer cannot be paused once it starts, and Google states that if you leave the assessment, for example by closing your browser or if your computer shuts down, the timer expires immediately and you wait a day for another attempt. Treat it as a booked 75 minute appointment rather than something to start between calls.

The five that count toward a Partner badge, and the ones that do not

Certifications are one of three requirement categories for Google Partner and Premier Partner status, and only a specific set counts. Google names them as Google Ads Search, Google Ads Display, Google Ads Video, Shopping ads and Google Ads Apps. It then states plainly that the Google Ads Professional certifications do not count toward the Partners badge, and that no other certification counts either.

This is the single most useful fact on this page for somebody comparing suppliers, because it means a long list of certificates on an agency website is not the same thing as progress toward a badge. Five specific exams count. Anything else is professional development, which is a perfectly good thing for a team to have and is not the credential it is sometimes presented as.

The criterion this page ranks on, and what it deliberately ignores

Nothing here ranks training providers or courses, and that is deliberate. The only things a reader can check before paying are published: the pass mark, the time limit, the validity period, the language list and which exams count toward a badge. Teaching quality cannot be checked in advance, so a page declaring one course the best preparation would be ranking on taste. The checkable criterion is the certificate itself, and the check is whether the named individual holds a current one.

Three questions for a supplier that says it is certified

• Who holds it, by name. Google issues it to a person. Ask which person, and whether that person will be working on your account or signing off somebody else work.
• Which of the five, and when was it last renewed. It lapses after a year. A Search certification from three years ago is a statement about 2023.
• What does it not cover. The assessment measures product knowledge. It says nothing about whether the agency has worked in your sector, how it reports, or who owns the account afterwards. That last one is the question people forget to ask, and account ownership and manager account structure is where it is settled.

The wider decision sits above all three. Whether to build this capability in your own team or buy it is a different question from whether the person you buy from is certified, and the in house against agency threshold is worth settling first.

A 200 that was a not found, caught while checking this page

While verifying the above we fetched a Skillshop learning path URL for the Google Ads certifications and received HTTP 200 with a fully styled page carrying Google navigation. The body said the content is no longer available and may have been retired or replaced. A fetcher that treats a 200 with valid HTML as a successful read would have recorded that page as the certification catalogue.

The practical lesson for anybody researching this is to reach Skillshop through the link on Google own Ads Help page about certifications rather than through a remembered or shared URL, because the learning paths get retired and replaced and the old address keeps answering.

Preparing for it without buying anything

Google recommendation is on the job experience with Google Ads plus the courses inside Skillshop, which are free. The most efficient preparation is to run a small live campaign in the product you are being examined on, because the assessment asks about settings and their consequences and the fastest way to learn a setting is to change it and watch the effect. Pair that with the Skillshop course for the specific exam and the published pass mark becomes a straightforward target.

Why there is no product recommended on this page

This page is here because a lot of people search for how the Google Ads certification works, and the honest version of that answer involves Google documentation and nothing else. We sell measurement of how AI assistants answer buying questions. That has no bearing on whether you pass a 75 minute Google exam, so recommending it here would be selling you something you did not come for. There is no product pitch below this line.

Questions about the Google Ads certification

Does the certification cost anything

The assessments and the preparation courses run through Skillshop, which requires an account. Google documentation on certifications describes creating an account and taking the assessments without naming a fee for them.

Can a company be Google Ads certified

No. Google issues the certification to an individual, and its own guidance says you may only refer to yourself as certified if you personally passed. A company can hold Google Partner or Premier Partner status, which is a separate programme with three requirement categories, of which certifications is one.

How long does a certification last

One year. Google states that it remains valid until the product area certification expires and that the assessment in that product area has to be retaken to renew it.

Which certification should somebody take first

Search, if the accounts you work on spend most of their money on search campaigns, because it covers the auction, keyword matching and the bidding units you will touch every day. Take the one matching the campaign type you actually run next, since the preparation doubles as job training.

Is a certification enough to run a client account

It establishes product knowledge, which is the floor rather than the ceiling. The judgement a client is paying for is in budget allocation, offer and landing page decisions and knowing when to stop a campaign, and none of those are examined. Treat the certificate as a filter and the account history as the evidence.

What happens if the exam is interrupted

Google states the timer expires immediately if you leave the assessment, including by closing the browser or a computer shutting down, and that the next attempt is one day later. Sit it somewhere with a stable connection and a charged machine.