Become a true professional of Analytics. Take the new Google Analytics course and become certified.

What does being Google Analytics certified mean? Google has created a new program to make more users of Google Analytics and even Google AdWords simply more knowledgeable about Analytics and AdWords.

How important is getting Google certified? Well if you are wanting to learn how to use the Analytics to its full potential then going through the Google course is an excellent idea. I use Google Analytics on a daily basis and as I went through the course I learned more about Google Analytics then I ever imagined. The course will truly open your eyes to just how powerful Google Analytics is. Also, if you consider yourself a Analytics Professional and give out services for Analytics then I believe that being able to show that you are trained by Google and have a certificate. Having the certificate shows credibility in your ability. As the online marketing industry gets more competitive, I believe we should find an edge that will put us above others, this is a good way. To get certified it comes with a small fee of $50 per test. You are only able to take one test so do not fail. To pass the individual must get a 75% or better and there is a time limit of 90 minutes. I found the test to be very easy after going through the course.

What did the course go over? Each lesson takes about 5-10 minutes. The course starts off at "first steps", where you learn just what Google Analytics is and how to set it up. Next the course goes into interpreting reports. The guidelines to the reports, how to setup pageviews, visits. The interpreting reports chapter also talks about content reports, time metrics, and traffic sources. After interpreting reports, the next chapter is fundamentals. IN fundamentals the course includes profiles, campaign tracking, AdWords integration (very powerful), and analysis focus. The last chapter is about a very professional and in-dept analysis of Google Analytics. The course teaches individuals how to setup custom reporting, advanced segmentation, creating a motion chart, and additional customizations.

Somethings That I learn in the Google course? The absolute best thing about the course for me was the filters in Google Analytics. There are so many different filters that can be setup for emails, e-commerce, and off-site pages its incredible. I also enjoyed learning about how the e-commerce tracking could really give an incredible amount of data, especially if you link it together with Google AdWords. The e-commerce portion of Analytics can give a true ROI on cost of AdWords to revenue. The Analytics can track sales and even how often someone has visited your site before they bought an item.

What other certifications are there? Google has a Google AdWords certification program which I have also done and is just as important. Google has a Google fundamentals course that is newly created which should teach you the fundamentals of online advertising.