Yesterday I took an online exam to become a Google Analytics accredited individual & I highly recommend the process.

There seems to be mixed feelings towards Google’s Conversion University, where it offers a series of online accreditation tests for its various products. 

The tests are cheap ($50 for Analytics) & as an unsupervised online test, it’s like an open book exam. You have access to the web, Google Help Center & the Google Search Engine to find all the answers.

The fruit of my labour

On the other hand, as a Google Analytics user, you rely on these tools in your everyday use of the product, so why not in the exam?

Critics would say it’s a fast-food approach to accreditation, but Google has always erred on the side of inclusive rather than exclusive, & its motivation is likely to be helping to ensure people understand & use its products properly.

I have to be honest – I only just passed. An 80% result was required & the test featured 70 questions in 90 minutes – not much time to Google things you don’t know & digest the results. 

My motivation for sitting was largely to confirm my knowledge of the product & also, as I regularly show others how to use it, I was interested in the quality of the training materials & process.

On this count I was most impressed. Conversion University had a detailed set of video presentations, slides and notes that I’ll be recommending to anyone interested in learning more about the product. I especially found the Regular Expressions & tracking across domains tutorials very useful.

But I did skim over sections I don’t use in my communications work – like details of the correct way to install & modify the tracking code. Sure enough, I fumbled these in the test.

So now I have a dodgy-looking certificate & a warm fuzzy feeling, but I also have a new confidence in my knowledge of the product, experience of some great new training resources & some specific areas I know to brush up on.

A worthwhile exercise!