Your latest degree may not come from a university — instead, it could be Google giving you the certification you need for your job. On Monday, the tech giant began offering to mobile site developers a brand new certification program, which tests a number of skills including how to improve site speeds, best practices in mobile UX design, and progressive web apps.
The point of the exam (or rather, the point of acing the exam), is to prove to potential employers that you have “a demonstrated ability to build and optimize high-quality sites, and [it] allows you to promote yourself as a Google accredited mobile site developer.”
It’s all part of Google’s larger Google Partners program, which already promises a number of free product exams and certifications. For example, you can already get certifications for Google AdWords and Analytics through the program.
The mobile site certification focuses most on site speed — or at least, most of the study guide‘s content does. The search engine has done quite a bit in the last year or so to improve the mobile web experience (it expanded its use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal last April). And, as the tech company points out, since most site visitors will leave a mobile page if it takes more than three seconds to load, it’s well worth it to ensure that things are as efficient as possible on small screens. That said, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done — the average load time for a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, Google points out.
We ought to point out, however, that Google’s mobile development exam isn’t focused in particular on any operating system (like Android or iOS). It does, however, have some content around Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project (which you may know better as AMP). In any case, this is one certification that may be worth checking out.
