Historically Google has said they won't be offering any SEO certification like they do for Google Ads, Google Analytics, and a whole slew of certification they offer. But that seems to have changed when Google announced the new Google Career Certificate scholarships for U.S. businesses.
Google's announcement is positive, don't get me wrong, Google is offering U.S. businesses up to 500 scholarships each to Google Career Certificates to train their employees. "Businesses can use Google Career Certificates to train their employees for jobs in data analytics, digital marketing & e-commerce, IT support, project management or user experience (UX) design," Google wrote.
These courses are taught by Googlers, Google said "all course instructors are Google employees who are subject-matter experts."
If you drill into the digital marketing course, you will see "Search Engine Optimization Specialist" is on the list:
So will you try to get certified by Google for SEO? Do you think this is a good idea for Google to offer? Can you imagine all the SEOs that get this and now say Google has certified them as SEO professionals?
This can get interesting.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Here is the other side of the coin on why this should not be a big deal?
Is marketing not something people can learn?
— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) May 3, 2022
Not sure my "shock tweet" is clear that I'm referring to the certification part, and not the learning part
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) May 3, 2022
So, Google is certifying SEO professionals now?
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) May 3, 2022
How is the output controlled that they won't use the leverage (and Google's name) for dodgy misleading practices?
