The Fractions Is a Google Partner
Every agency says it is good at Google Ads. But not every agency has Google Partner Status.
The Fractions is now a Google Partner Agency, and you can check that for yourself on our Google Partners profile rather than taking our word for it. This means we operate with accredited team members and have passed all the Google criteria
Google Partners At a Glance
Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
What this covers | What Google Partner status means, how it is earned, and how to verify any agency's badge. |
Who it's for | UK SMEs choosing, reviewing or replacing a Google Ads agency. |
What Google measures | Three things: optimisation score, ad spend across managed accounts, and certification coverage across the team. |
Spend threshold | USD 10,000 across all managed accounts in a rolling 90-day period. *We're around 70 times that! |
Certification requirement | At least half of account strategists certified in Google Ads through Skillshop. 100% of our ads team are certified currently. |
How to verify a badge | Click it. It should open that company's public Google Partners profile page. |
Related service | Google Ads management. |
What is a Google Partner?
Google Partners is Google's certification programme for companies that manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of clients. Meet the requirements and you get a badge and a public profile page that anyone can look at. It is free to join, so the badge is not about paying Google for a logo. It is about clearing three thresholds and continuing to clear them.
The status is reviewed on an ongoing basis. What do you have to do to get it?
Three requirements, all of which have to hold at the same time.
Performance. Your manager account needs a minimum 70% optimisation score. That is Google's own read on how well the accounts under your management are set up, and it covers every client account you run, not the one you'd like to show people. Whilst optimisation is more about ticking Google boxes than clients, it does show youraccoujnt is being worked on regularly. Google comes up with automated suggestions and if you don't approve or decline them, your score drops. TBH, we decline far more than we approve, as they are often aimed at making Google more money, not our clients/
Spend. At least £10,000 in ad spend across all managed accounts in a 90-day window. We have about 70 times that under management, so that's well covered
Certifications. At least half of the people with admin or standard access to the manager account have to hold current Google Ads certifications from Skillshop, across the product areas being run. Google has said publicly that certification coverage is the requirement most agencies fall short on, because it means the whole team keeping current, not one person.
Why should you care?
Most of what an agency tells you in a pitch is unverifiable until you have paid them for six months. Partner status is not. You click the badge, it opens the public profile, and either the company is listed or it isn't.
The second is access. Partners get Google support channels, product betas and account-level input that non-partners don't. That matters most when something breaks: a disapproval, a sudden cost per click jump, a tracking issue that has been eating your data for a fortnight. Getting to a human at Google quickly is worth real money when your leads have stopped arriving.
What the badge doesn't do
Partner Status confirms an agency meets Google's criteria. It says nothing about whether your campaigns make you a profit.
Look at the optimisation score requirement. It is Google's view of your account, and Google's recommendations are not always right for your client. We have dismissed plenty of them. Broad match expansions and budget increases that look great on the score can quietly fill a finance client's account with people who will never be fundable.
A good account manager holds the score high while still saying no to the recommendations that don't suit the business.
So use the badge as a filter.
Google Partner status measures what happens inside the ad account. It does not look at the page the ad lands on, the form, the quote journey, or the follow-up. That is where most of your money can be wasted.
We ran a vehicle finance account that grew 1,250% from ads in 18 months at over 400% ROI, and a fair share of that came from replacing a static application form with a proper quoting dashboard, so the journey matched a long sales cycle. With Kapital Finance, the previous agency had stopped producing viable leads and left contact data full of holes. We verified the data to 99%+ accuracy before a single email went out, and the work produced a 1,381% increase in website traffic against previous activity, a 71.9% average email open rate and 108 verified sales leads. No badge covers that half of the job. Someone still has to build it.
Talk to us about ads.
Attract, convert, compound.
If you want a second opinion on your account and the journey behind it, we offer a free audit. No deck, no pitch, just what we'd change and why.
