Wow, look at that certificate I received from Google for completing their Adwords training course and exam! Doesn’t it look great? I like it myself, however, I actually have a few problems with these free online training courses with certificates.

The Problems With Free Online Training Courses With Certificates

Problem #1: Anyone Can Cheat On These Exams

Most of these certificates (especially the Bing Ads certificate) are easy to procure without cheating if you’re familiar with the industry. But let’s say you’re a shoddy search engine optimiser who doesn’t even know what a “quality score” in PPC advertising is. but you want an Adwords certificate to say you’re “Google certified”. Well then, all you need to do is open up your exam and head on over to Coodie, Guttulus,  or any other exam study site that provides at least 80% of the correct answers in a new tab.

Problem #2: Anyone Can Easily Create A Fake Copy

Unless you’re clever enough to perform a search query for the recipient’s name (for example, if you search for “Alistair Kavalt” in Google, you’ll find my Google Partners profile verifying the certificate) or the certificate holder links to their Google Partner profile, you may just be looking at a fake certificate. In fact, all anyone needs to do to create a fake certificate is toss a legitimate certificate into Photoshop and place their name on the certificate in the same place, font, and style. That’s it.

Problem #3: Your Clients & Leads May Not Care

This is probably just me, but my clients don’t care about certificates, they care that I can get the work done right and on time. In fact, not one of them has ever asked me about my certificates. In contrast, I’m pretty sure my certificates are the reason I’ve had more success converting leads this past month during a test I was running.