Interesting to hear, Jason, that they told you the non-profit work wouldn’t apply, yet it did. i think that sort of supports my hypothesis that it’s more about parters just maintaining a spend, than it is about actual performance. Has anyone ever been declined because someone thought they weren’t working up to par? I don’t think so 😉

Congratulations, and yeah the test is not “easy” by any means, but I think they’re designed well. I do actually new things each time I have to take it.

Was surprised to get it because all my Adwords clients are non-profits with a Google Grant, using a free budget. I’d been told that because I wasn’t spending clients’ actual money I wouldn’t achieve partnership, because it wouldn’t count towards the spend requirement. Yet I did. Maybe they changed the rules?

The exams should be tricky for anyone without experience, with plenty of jargon, and a few unclear questions. I didn’t cheat… but I’m aware that anyone can simply look up the answers from several websites. So certification doesn’t necessarily prove knowledge.

Performance should be the factor that sorts out the experts from the clueless. Google say you only get partner status after a whole year of having a manager account and achieving a level of good performance for clients, seeing growth and getting results. But… there’s no data to help me understand how that was calculated, except a single green bar. Did a real life person make the decision? Or an algorithm? I would actually like to know what Google thinks I did well.

Google can be so opaque.

Thanks for saying so, Alistair, and yeah, I think it’s a stain on the industry, but Google doesn’t seem to care as long as the partners are bringing in ad dollars.

Which is why most business owners smartly hire from referrals only.