The Google Advertising Program’s transition to the Google Certification Program has not been made without technical difficulties.
I received the following email from the GCP team today.
Hi,
As you may know the Google Advertising Professionals Program ended on October
31st, and was replaced with the new Google Certification Program, which introduces a broader curriculum and tougher exams that demonstrate expertise in search, display and reporting & analysis.Unfortunately we experienced some technical issues on migrating over to the new program. During this migration some of our previously qualified ‘Google Advertising Professionals’ partners may have received an email in error stating they have just become a ‘Certified Google Advertising Professional’.
This was a legacy issue with our system and as the ‘Google Advertising Professionals’ program no longer exists, this is unfortunately not the case.
To become certified under the new program, and take advantage of a more in-depth knowledge of AdWords, partners will need to become certified under the new program criteria as your Google Advertising Professionals status will no longer count as an official certification with Google.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and look forward to partnering with you in the future.
The Google Certification Team
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdWords product or account.
I for one am glad to have received this email.
As I wrote here previously, its unclear to me what term if any the Qualified Individual designation will be replaced with let alone whether it still exists.
Presently in my Google Pro Center, my Google Certification Program designation is referenced in three ways –
1. “Google AdWords Qualified Individual”
2. “Individually Qualified”
3. “AdWords Individual Qualification”
Google AdWords Qualiified Individual
It would be helpful for those of us in the program if the Google Certified Partners team would publish a centrally located overview of the program’s qualifications and terminology.
Ideally the Google Certified Partners team would also create a “Google Certified Partners Community” tab on their home page to establish a dialogue between both AdWords Partners and those Googlers charged with overseeing them.
Google Certification Program Community
Google Certification Program Community
Search Marketing Communications 
You must be logged in to post a comment.