What Google Partner status tells you about an agency

The status measures the agency, not your account

The Partner badge shows that an agency demonstrates a minimum level of Google Ads business, certifications and upkeep of Google's recommendations. It does not show that your account is run profitably. All the criteria are tied to the agency's manager account and are added up across all its clients. A single badly run account does not stand out in that total, and nor does an outstandingly run one.

That is no reproach to Google. The programme is built to promote Google Ads business and measures accordingly. What you are buying, though, is results for your shop. That is why the badge belongs at the start of a selection, as an exclusion criterion, and not at the end, as a justification.

Disclosure up front: I am a Google Partner myself and sell Google Ads management as a freelancer. Read the assessments in this article with that in mind.

Which three criteria apply

According to Google, there are three requirement categories, checked daily: Performance, Spend and Certifications.

Below this tier there is plain membership. According to Google, signing up with the manager account is enough for that. Only Partners and Premier Partners may display the badge.

Why a 70 percent optimisation score says little about quality

According to Google, the optimisation score is an estimate and changes as soon as recommendations are applied or dismissed. Since 2021, Partners have also been allowed to dismiss recommendations to stay above the threshold. That came after the new requirements had drawn considerable criticism in the industry.

For you as a retailer, this means: 70 percent shows that someone is working through the list of recommendations. It does not show whether the decisions were good. For target ROAS, for example, Google suggests broadening targeting and making sure the budget is not constraining additional conversions. That can be right if the target ROAS is above your break-even and demand is going unused. It is wrong if the additional conversions are bought below contribution margin. One practitioner reports that many recommendations aim at more spend, and cites a well-performing campaign with an optimisation score below 14 percent.

My assessment: how an agency handles recommendations is more telling than the score itself. More in the article on the optimisation score.

The person on your account does not have to be certified

The certification rule requires 50 percent of the account strategists on the manager account. An agency with ten people meets it if five are certified. The person who handles your account day to day can be one of the other five.

On top of that, according to Google, certifications are valid for one year. They prove basic knowledge of features, not experience with feeds, margins or seasonal patterns.

The useful question is therefore not "Are you a Google Partner?" but: who works on my account operationally, and is that person certified?

Premier Partner: the top three percent by Google's yardstick

According to Google, a company becomes a Premier Partner if it meets the Partner requirements and is among the top 3 percent of participating companies in its country, determined annually. The evaluation is relative, meaning compared with other agencies, and is not available in every country.

The measures used are revealing:

• growth in ad spend among existing clients
• growth in ad spend among new Google Ads clients
• client retention
• share of spend outside Search
• annual ad spend in the managed accounts

Clients' revenue, profit or ROAS do not appear. Premier Partner therefore rewards agencies whose clients spend more with Google, use more formats outside Search and stay for a long time. That can coincide with good work: anyone who scales profitably also increases spend. It coincides just as well with budget increases without any check on profitability. The status does not distinguish between the two.

Which incentives come with the status

According to Google, Partners and Premier Partners receive promotional offers that let them boost new clients' budgets with Google Ads credits, plus rewards competitions and a listing in the Partners directory. Depending on market and business size, Premier Partners also get strategic and sales support and events for executives.

None of this implies misconduct. It does imply a conflict of interest you should be aware of: for keeping Premier status, what counts is growth in your Google spend. For you, what counts is contribution margin after ad spend. As long as both point in the same direction, that is not a problem. You notice the difference when a budget ought to come down, for example because ROAS is rising but profit is not.

What the status means for freelancers

For a sole provider the same thresholds apply, but they work differently. The person is the only account strategist on the manager account, so the 50 percent rule here means: this person is certified. The $10,000 over 90 days has to come from their own clients, that is, from a small number of accounts. And the optimisation score is maintained by exactly the person who also manages your account.

With a freelancer, the badge therefore says more about the person than it says about an agency's team. About the results in your account, it says just as little. In my assessment, a sole provider will hardly ever become a Premier Partner, because spend growth and total spend are compared across a country. That tells you nothing about quality, only about size. The general trade-off is covered under agency or freelancer.

How to use the badge when choosing

A decision rule I consider defensible:

1. Check the badge. According to Google, a Partner badge used online must link to the public Partner profile page. If the link goes nowhere, the claim is not substantiated.
2. Interpret a missing badge. If an agency says it has many clients and large budgets but has no badge, ask why. For a small provider with few accounts, the spend threshold may simply not have been reached yet.
3. Check the person, not the company. Who works on your account, how many accounts does that person manage, are they certified.
4. Ask how recommendations are handled. Have them explain the rule by which budget and targeting recommendations are applied or dismissed. Anyone who applies them automatically has given you an answer.
5. Agree the measure of success. Agree what performance is measured against: contribution margin, new customers, profit after ad spend. Not spend, not clicks.

This rule does not apply if you only want to test a starting budget anyway and have little choice. Then the badge is enough as basic protection, and you settle the measure of success after the first few months. For everything else, see the articles on choosing a management provider and on how to recognise good work.

If you talk to me: I start with an audit using read-only access and a written roadmap, work on the account myself and take on a limited number of clients. Whether that suits you is best decided with the same five questions.

A note on the criteria: Google adjusts the Partners programme regularly, and the thresholds above are taken from the current Help Center.