Just to mirror what you might have spotted across some other sites online, Google have recently launched a new professional certification to go alongside their Advertising, Analytics, and Optimiser qualifications.

The ‘Google Conversion Professional‘ qualification is by far the hardest to attain out of all of those released so far, and cannot be achieved by an individual – this is a company level certification.

In order to qualify for this, you must have at a minimum:

• Be qualified as a GAAC
• Be qualified as a WOAC
• Have 3 Google Advertising Professional employees
• Have 3 Analytics IQ employees
• Have 5 employees working in this area

And on and on. There are a couple of other requirements (case studies, 1 new case study per quarter, training attendance) but these are the key certifications needed.

There are a few companies who have got this already, it’s not an easy achievement and I can imagine it will take quite a dedicated effort to get all these covered off AND the case study production and requirements. It reminds we of working toward a new piece of epic gear in World of Warcraft for some reason, having the list of everything to complete and then slowly working toward it over a month or two.

I think it’s hard to say how valuable this will be, from what I can tell currently, the only people that really know about it are the companies trying to achieve it – not the clients who are looking for conversion services, so I’m not sure how much business benefit it would bring.  I have seen these accreditations used to good effect during trade show for example, where qualified vendors stand out from the crowd.  I’m just not sure how valuable they are for day to day business, when you factor in the massive business cost involved in achieving and maintaining all of these requirements.