Accepted answer
On the detail: what makes a certificate useful is not its appearance but whether you could hand it to another laboratory and they would reproduce the result.
Batch versus lot is a semantic distinction that determines whether one certificate applies to ten vials or to one, and checking this distinction is worth a minute.
Lot number visibility is the first check, and it is the one most certificates fail — the number is not printed on the vial, or it is on the certificate but the vial is unmarked.
Pharmacopoeial standards require method validation steps that research-grade certificates almost never claim to meet, and the absence of that claim is itself information.
The limitation is cost — truly rigorous testing on every lot is expensive enough that most people do not do it, which is exactly why the variation matters.
My working rule is that a document without a lot number, a method section and a test date is marketing.