A 5-Step Plan to Mastering the New GAIQ Exam

Heads up, search marketers: Google recently updated their Analytics Individual Qualification exam, and it’s a whole new test for a new era of digital analytics.

When our in-house SEO team at SpareFoot decided to attempt the daunting task of conquering the GAIQ exam, we discovered that Google had quietly updated the test earlier in the year. After doing some digging, we were surprised at the lack of information from Google about the update.

What was even more shocking to learn was there were very few resources on the new exam and its new format. Countless older blog posts on the former exam with test-taking tips littered the web, but few held any relevancy for the updated test. After a couple of weeks spent studying and working together to learn all about the new GA exam, each team member nervously took the test. Low and behold, we all passed with flying colors.

After watching videos, reading blog posts, studying, and taking the final exam, we felt like we’d come a long way in our mastery of Google Analytics. With our newfound confidence as GAIQ authorities, we decided to compile our tips for preparing for the exam and taking the test. We hope this guide will serve as a useful resource to those out there trying to study for the new GAIQ format.

Let’s Begin

Depending on your level of experience with Google Analytics, we suggest dedicating a good 10-15 hours of preparation before taking the test. Read all the external resources we recommend in Step 1, followed by all of our additional tips and resources in Steps 2-5. We feel confident that after reading and comprehending all of the material mentioned, following our test taking tips, and understanding the important concepts we detail at the end of this post, you will ace your GAIQ exam.

Step 1: Review these resources

• Analytics Academy: Watch the courses’ videos with Justin Cutroni and make sure you take notes along the way. Underneath each individual activity video there will be a few practice quizzes about what you just watched, TAKE THEM! These are extremely important as some of the GAIQ Test questions are taken word-for-word from these sections.

Course One: Digital Analytics Fundamentals (6 Units) – Learn the core principles of digital analytics, including how to build a useful measurement plan for your business and how to get started with Google Analytics.

Sections to focus on: 2.1, 2.4, 3.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.4, 5.5

Course Two: Google Analytics Platform Principles (4 Units) – Learn how the components of the Google Analytics Platform work together to collect and organize the business data you need for reporting and analysis.

Sections to focus on: 1.2, 2.4, 3.3, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4

• Additional Resources: In the top right corner of each section, there are two resources to note:

Text versions of each unit. These will be useful to reference when you are searching for what information was covered in each individual video.

Outside resources. Google lists for you other additional resources that you should definitely reference, especially in sections you are unfamiliar with.

• Final Assessments: At the end of each course there is a Final Assessment that encompasses questions from all the units you covered. Take both of these and make a note of which sections you struggled with so you can go back and rewatch/reread that information.

Course One: Final Assessment

Course Two: Final Assessment

• Analytics Help Center: One last thing you may want to look over is the Google Analytics Help Center. This resource goes into great detail about some very specific topics and would be good to read over after you assess which components you are struggling with.

Step 2: Know these GAIQ test facts

• The test is open notes format and you can have multiple browser windows open.
• The test is 70 questions: Questions are either multiple choice with one correct answer, multiple choice with multiple correct answers, or true/false format.
• You have a 90 minute timer that runs while you take the test.
• When answering a question you have three options; you can answer it, mark it, or leave it unanswered.
• At any point during the test you can review unanswered and marked questions. You also have the option to review all questions in a row.
• You can pause the test an unlimited number of times.
• Once you pause the test, the test window closes and you are taken back to the homepage of the testing site until you are ready to resume.
• You must submit your test for grading within 120 hours (or five days) of starting it.
• You must receive an 80% to pass or answer 56/70 questions correctly.
• The test costs $50 and is non-refundable.
• Purchase the test, manage test records, and print out your certificate here: https://google.starttest.com/

Step 3: Utilize these GAIQ test taking tips

When you are answering questions:

• Read every question carefully including the instructions on each question. There are many questions where you have to select multiple options.
• Use the pause button. You can pause as many times as you want. If you want to look up a question, pause the test so you are not wasting any time.
• If you are not 100% confident in your answer, then you have two options. You can leave the question unanswered or mark it for review. The test will filter these questions for you to review at the end. 
• If you are 100% confident, answer the question and click next. If you have time you can review all questions at the end to check for errors, but you shouldn’t waste time on questions that are obvious to you.
• Don’t be paranoid about Google trying to trick you. After taking the practice tests in the Analytics Academy, it’s easy to think Google will try to trick you with their vague wording of questions. However, during the GAIQ exam most questions are pretty straightforward. When a question seems very obvious it most likely is.

When taking the test you should have open:

• Google Analytics. GA is one of the best resources to have open during the exam especially for complex questions about setting up accounts, views, reports, and filters.
• Your notes from the Analytics Academy. Most of the test comes directly from concepts covered in the Cutroni videos. Watching these videos and taking notes are probably the single best resource to passing the exam. Use CTRL + F on your notes to quickly search for topics when you come across a question you are unsure of during the test.

• Activity questions and practice tests from the Analytics Academy. Have these questions readily available. A good amount of the questions come directly from these practice questions.
• Analytics Help Center. Topics are covered in-depth in the Google Analytics help center. Use the help center for complicated questions. You can quickly search the help center during the exam, should you need further details on a topic.
• URL Builder. This tool is really helpful when referencing questions about campaign parameters and questions that ask you to create a campaign tagged URL.

What additional things you should do:

• Take breaks. With five days to complete the exam there is no pressure to blow through it. You will likely start to feel overwhelmed after about 20-30 questions. Take a break anytime you start feeling stressed or distracted. We took multiple breaks and walks during the test to clear our heads.
• Pick the best time for you to take the test. If you are not a morning person, don’t take it in the morning. Pick a time of day when you are at your mental peak.
• Pick the best location to take the test. If you do your best work at a noisy coffee shop then take the exam there. If you need complete silence for you to focus, then make sure you take the exam at a place that won’t be distracting.
• Use an additional computer monitor. Having a second monitor is helpful when looking up resources while you are taking the test. Have the test on one screen and all your additional resources open on another.

Step 4: Comprehend these topics from the Analytics Academy

• Don’t mix your Sources up with your Mediums. A source is name of the site which sent the visitor your way, while the medium is how the user got there. For example, if a visitor searches Google and follows a link there to your site, then the source would be Google. However, the medium would depend on which link on Google the user actually followed. If the visitor came to your site by clicking a paid ad in the Google search results, then the medium for the visit would be CPC. However, if the visitor clicked a link to your site in Google’s organic search listings, then the medium would be counted as Organic. So that first visit would have a Source/Medium of Google/CPC, while the second would have a Source/Medium of Google/Organic. For an email newsletter, you could use the name of the newsletter as your source (for example, ‘Email Newsletter’), while the medium should be counted as ‘Email.’

• Google detects three mediums without any customization. These are Organic, which includes all unpaid traffic from search engines, Referral, which includes traffic from another (non-search engine) site on the web, and None, which is the medium for direct visits to your site (these visits will have a source of Direct). For Google to detect other mediums like display ads or email, you’ll need to tag your links, otherwise they’ll be counted as referrals. The one exception to this is AdWords. AdWords auto-tags your links, so you won’t need to add any campaign variables for these campaigns. Remember, however, that you’ll need to first link your Google Analytics and Google AdWords account for this data to sync correctly.

• You must include Source, Medium, and Campaign tracking variables in your link tags to track campaigns accurately. All other variables are optional. The optional campaign parameters are Term and Content. Use Term to record the keyword from paid search campaigns, and Content to test different variations of your campaigns. Remember that campaign variables don’t need to be in any specified order. Campaign variable values are case sensitive.

• Understand different Attribution Models and when you might use them. Attribution models allow you to assign credit for sales or goal conversions to channels at particular points in a conversion path. Setting up the appropriate attribution models can give you insight into how you can better allocate resources by channel. By default, GA uses the Last Non-Direct Click attribution model, in which the last channel a visitor interacted with gets all of the credit for the conversion, disregarding whether or not the visitor actually converted on a direct visit. This model assumes that the direct visit was actually won by the previous channel the visitor came in on, and so that channel deserves all the credit. For example, if a visitor found your site via a PPC ad but then didn’t convert until a direct visit the next day, that PPC ad deserves credit for the conversion. However, with the Last Click model, the last channel a visitor came in on is responsible for the conversion, even if it was a direct visit. The First Interaction model gives 100% of the conversion value to the channel a visitor first experienced, and is useful when running ad campaigns geared towards building brand awareness. With the Linear model, all channels a visitor interacted with receive equal credit, and is useful for measuring the holistic performance of a campaign. The Time Decay model also gives credit to all channels in a conversion path, but attributes more of the credit to channels nearest to the conversion, while the Position Based model allows you to specify the percent of the conversion credit each step in the path should receive, first, middle, and last. Finally, you can also create your own custom model. You can compare how models represent your data and figure out which is best for your campaigns using the Model Comparison Tool.

• Multi-Channel Funnels allow you to see how different channels assisted in generating conversions. Most conversion reports give all credit for the conversion to the last channel a visitor interacted with before converting, but with this report, you can examine how other marketing activities might have led to that final conversion. The report will include any other channels the visitor experienced within the last 30 days before converting by default, but can be set to include interactions as far back as 90 days prior to the conversion. There are three roles a channel can play in a conversion path: first, assist, and last. In the Assisted Conversions report you’ll find a column titled Assisted/Last Click or Direct Conversions, which is a ratio representing whether or not a channel provides more assisted or direct conversions. The closer the ratio is to 0, the more the channel was responsible for direct conversions rather than assists. If the ratio is above 1, that means the channel was responsible for more assists than direct conversions. If the ratio is exactly one, that means the channel was responsible for as many assists as it was direct conversions.

• Accounts have Properties which have Views. At the account level, businesses can group their digital assets together and set configurations like user access. Each business or business unit typically has a single account. Each account can have multiple properties, which each individually collect their own data with their own Google Analytics tracking IDs. It’s generally a good idea to create a different property for your business’s websites, subdomains, mobile apps, and other digital properties. Views allow you to configure your data for reporting, like setting filters that exclude traffic from your company’s IP address, or creating distinct ways of looking at the data for different users to access.

• Once view filters have been applied, the data is permanently changed. You won’t be able to undo your filters and see the original data before it was processed for the configuration settings that you applied. Because of that, it’s best practice to keep three essential views for each property: an unfiltered view of the original raw data, a master view configured for reporting, and a test view where you test out new configurations.

• Bounce Rate: Every search marketer worth their salt has a thorough definitional understanding of bounce rate, but in this test you’ll need to know how to put it into context. Be aware of the different kinds of business objectives this metric will help you to improve upon, and for which objectives it isn’t of any direct help. For example, when measuring the performance of a landing page that’s meant to lead into a conversion funnel, a high bounce rate provides evidence that users might not be finding what they expect on that page, and that by testing new page designs or copy you might be able to send more visitors further into the funnel to generate more conversions. There are other types of pages, however, for which a high bounce rate is perfectly acceptable: for example, blogs, which often list multiple posts on a single page, will naturally have higher bounce rates, as the visitor isn’t necessarily required to navigate to another page to view more content.

• Dimension widening allows you to upload your own external data to use as dimensions. With dimension widening, you can import external data that wouldn’t otherwise be tracked with the GA tracking code into your account. For example, if you’re running a news site, you could import author and topic data for each page on your site. This would allow you to view page metrics with ‘Author’ and ‘Topic’ as dimensions, allowing you to see things like average time on page for each topic or bounce rate for each author.

• There are four types of goals. These can be further divided into two more types, those that track actions and those that track behavior. Action goals include destination and event goals. Destination goals are triggered when a visitor lands on a specified page or page type. Event goals track specific actions like watching a video or downloading a file. Event goals require special code called ‘Event Tracking’ to be implemented on your site. The two behavior goals are Duration and Pages per visit. Pages per visit goals are triggered when a visitor views more or fewer pages than you specified when you set up your goal, while Duration goals are triggered when a visitor spends more or less time on your site than the threshold that you set.

• Goal values vs. Ecommerce values. Goal values differ from Ecommerce values in that they allow you to attribute monetary values to actions other than transactions. For example, if you determine that each visitor that signs up for your email list is worth approximately $50 to your business, you can set that value and have Google record it whenever an email signup is completed. Ecommerce reporting allows you to track sales and other transactions, and requires you to 1. Enable Ecommerce tracking in your GA view, and 2. Add the special Ecommerce tracking code into your GA tracking code on your ‘Transaction Complete’ landing pages. Goal conversions can only be counted once per visit: if a visitor watches a video that you’ve set up as a goal worth $5 five different times in a single visit, that’s only counted as a single conversion worth $5. If you’ve set the goal up as an Ecommerce transaction, that visitor just triggered 5 conversions worth a total of $25 to your business.

• Know the ins and outs of table manipulation. Dimensions are characteristics of your users, their sessions and their actions. An example dimension would be location, which would allow you to segment your data to see individual metrics like sessions or bounce rate for visitors from different cities or countries. Some reports in GA allow you to add secondary dimensions, which will further segment the groups from the first dimension based on another dimension. For example, if we add Browser as a secondary dimension to a location report where the primary dimension is Country/Territory, we’ll get metrics for segments divided first by country, then by each browser. I’d use this combination of dimensions to answer a question like ‘Do I get more visits from the United States from users browsing with Chrome or Internet Explorer?’ or ‘What’s the bounce rate for Indian visitors using Safari?’ Table filters allow you to exclude data based on certain dimensions or metrics. I could use a table filter to view only dimension segments that saw more than 10 visits. Table sorts allow you to change the order in which the data in each column is displayed. For example, by default the metric ‘Sessions’ is displayed from highest to lowest, but I can change the sort order to see the segments with the lowest number of sessions in the topmost rows. Pivot tables are another way of adding secondary dimensions to your report, and allow you a more fluid way of segmenting data into groups.

• Grasp the Goal Flow Report. The Goal Flow report creates a visualization of how your visitors moved through a conversion funnel towards a goal. Each step or ‘node’ will represent a page the user navigated through towards the final conversion. You can use this report to optimize the performance of each page in the funnel and thus the ultimate conversion rate of your site by looking for things like where loops back to a previous step in the funnel, steps of the funnel that underperform, where visitors unexpectedly exit the funnel and where your visitors are entering the conversion funnel.

• Be familiar with the AdWords reports. There are a lot of questions that ask specific questions about the various AdWords reports in Google Analytics. Know what the data in each report tells you. For example, the AdWords Day Parts Report breaks down how your AdWords campaigns perform for each hour of the day. Use this report to better target the timing of your AdWords campaigns.

Step 5: Learn these topics not detailed in the Analytics Academy

• Intelligence Events: Intelligence reports can be found under the home tab and can be generated automatically or you can create a custom one. They are helpful in identifying large statistical variations that you may have otherwise have missed.

• Site Speed Reports: Make sure you are up to speed on this report and understand that site speed it is determined by three main indicators of latency: Page-load time, Execution speed, and how quickly a page can be parsed for the user to interact with.

• Demographics Report: Make sure you understand that the collection of demographic information is made possible by DoubleClick third-party cookies. Cookies that are associated with a user are the only ones that will contribute to your data collection. There are a portion of cookies that do not have a user associated with it so you will not get a full picture across your users, but a subset of the whole. Demographics can also help identify a market that you do not currently promote to, but have active users.

• Measurement Protocol: This gives developers the ability to see raw interaction data throughout their platforms creating a view across devices not normally found in GA, like digital appliances or a point of purchase system. Your UA code helps connect these interfaces and is a feature of Universal Analytics.

• Technologies Outside of GA and You as a Website Owner: There were a few technologies that were suggested that affected your and the technology’s interaction with GA. For Example, make sure that you know things like how Flash and AJAX will affect how you count a visit or what metrics you would look at most when rebuilding a website.

• Tag Manager: This nifty tool takes the developer work out of building custom tracking code. Remember these 3 main tips – use one account for every site, delete all other tracking code on the page after implementing them, and you only need one container for all tracking codes.

In Conclusion

Passing the GAIQ exam is no easy feat. Just remember to give yourself plenty of time to study and comprehend all the material listed here.

Godspeed!

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If you’ve taken the new exam or are planning on taking it, we’d love to get your feedback in the comments below.

*All images in this post are original creations unless otherwise noted.