You might be wondering now why you should care particularly about my fabulous Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) post beside all the others out there who teach you how to pass the exam in two days or 5 easy steps, blarblarblar.
Well, I too am most currently drawn in by these posts (my test will be on Tuesday ‘fingers crossed’!) and some of them are yes, quite useful… but outdated/expired/non-relevant. The GAIQ has been updated recently around the end of ’14/early ’15. So here I am with a few recent things, summing up what I gathered. Take them as a note if you’re curious about taking the current exam in 2015.
Let’s start off with some framework-stuff:
- There are 70 multiple choice questions
- You need 80% in order to pass
- You got 90 minutes, and only 90 minutes because there is NO pause anymore
- Also, there is NO skipping questions and NO returning anymore
- Certification is valid for 18 months
- The test is now completely free. The test used to cost $50.
- If you fail you can retake the test after 7 days, not 14 like how it used to be
- The exam can now be found at https://www.google.com/partners/
Old strategies recommended to pause and/or mark questions, do some research, then come back to answer the questions later. Back then you could pause up to three times. But as you can see, these times have passed. So forget that. Some articles also say Google has made the questions harder i.e the questions are more about application of the knowledge than pure definition of terms. I can’t say anything about it, we will see.
So what am I personally doing in order to be prepared for my first try? The ‘strategy’:
- Watch, at least twice, each of the following: Digital Analytics Fundamentals, Google Analytics Platform Principles (you especially want to know what they talk about when it comes to Collection, Processing, Configuration, and Reporting. My Prof repeated it in class – I interpret that as a wink for the high possibility that some of it will appear), Ecommerce Analytics and Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals
- Watch all of the above one last time and take notes (Don’t write pages on that, I always keep things simple. Short notes stimulate your memory better than long stories)
- Glance over this great cheat sheet (muhah) by Blast Analytics and Marketing
- If you still don’t feel confident, check out this more detailed post and make check marks on what you know and brush up on your weak spots!
- Take the exam. But when taking the exam, have some useful tabs open with: Blast Cheat Sheet, URL Campaign Builder, Regular Expression Tool, Google Analytics Help Centre, and Google Search.
This should be a good GAIQ-survival-kit which helps you through the test. But after all, it’s for you, yourself, and not about passing just for the sake of it. You want to learn something and be able to use GA, right? I guess it will be like every other exam too. If you study, you’ll be able to relax throughout the exam. And once you’re through it:
You’ll feel smarter and your clients will be happier. Good luck, bro!
Karl Holz - Digital Marketing 