Google certifications

The credentials below are Google's learning credentials: the Career Certificates, the free Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course and the Skillshop product certifications. Google Cloud's proctored exams are a separate programme with separate rules, described under Google Cloud.

Career Certificates: training first, credential second

The Career Certificates began in 2018 with IT Support, a programme Google built to fill its own help-desk roles, and have since grown to cover data analytics, business intelligence, project management, UX design, cybersecurity, IT automation and digital marketing. Each is a sequence of courses on Coursera ending in a capstone or portfolio work, with a job-search module at the end. The learner pays a monthly subscription after a short trial, so the cost depends on pace, and Coursera offers financial aid on application. The certificate is issued on completion; there is no supervised exam and no renewal.

That shapes how to use them. Their strength is structure: a beginner gets a sensible order of topics, practical exercises and something to show at the end. Their weakness is signalling, since a completion certificate proves persistence rather than performance under test. Google is candid about this in places, pointing Cybersecurity learners to Security+, IT Support learners to A+, and Project Management learners toward CAPM. The best way to read the programmes is as preparation for those proctored exams, or as portfolio builders in fields such as UX where no exam dominates.

• For beginners: IT Support, Data Analytics, Project Management, UX Design, Cybersecurity and Digital Marketing & E-commerce.
• For people already working in the field: Advanced Data Analytics, Business Intelligence and IT Automation with Python, which Coursera labels advanced.
• Free: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing on Skillshop, which now ends in a completion award without an exam.

Skillshop: free product certifications

Skillshop is Google's training platform for the tools businesses use, above all Google Ads and Google Analytics. The training and the certification assessments cost nothing, and passing them shows that you know a Google product well enough to work with it. They are product credentials, useful to agencies and in-house marketers who run those tools. Unlike the Career Certificates they are time-limited; each certification's page gives its validity and renewal rule.

The terms are the same across the Ads set: an unproctored online assessment of 75 minutes, 80 per cent to pass, a day's wait after a failure, and a certificate that lapses after twelve months unless you pass the current version again. That yearly cycle is the key to reading these certificates. They are free because Google wants advertisers competent on its products, and they matter most inside the Google Partners programme, where an agency's badge depends on how many of its staff hold current Search, Display, Video, Shopping or Apps certificates; Measurement does not count. For an individual they prove product fluency rather than judgement, and no proctor watches the test. Google has piloted a proctored, paid Professional tier for Search, Display and Video, still limited to a small audience; until it opens, treat a Skillshop certificate as a useful, renewable proof of study, and the Analytics certification as the one that says most about your data literacy.

How to choose

The right choice depends on the question. Whether a field suits someone: the free Skillshop course, or the first course of a Career Certificate under the trial, answers it cheaply. How to learn a field from scratch: a Career Certificate gives the structure, provided the pace stays steady and the subscription ends on the day the last course is marked complete. How to prove knowledge to an employer: usually a proctored exam or a portfolio, with the Google credential as supporting evidence rather than the headline.