Google Advertising Professional / GAP

**paul** · 22-07-2008 11:08 AM

I'm thinking of doing the Google Advertising Professional program , and came across this review of it.

One think that stumps me is the $1,000 spend bit. I need to spend this amount every 90 days ? Which is about €7/day which is easily managed. But I was wondering, if say I take the exam first, and then start with the spend, will this also work ?

Has many people taken the test ? And how much study would be needed ?

I see the list of individuals for ireland is here : http://www.whoisagap.com/individuals/ireland.html and companies is here : http://www.whoisagap.com/companies/ireland.html but I don't know how up to date they are .

**blacknight** · 22-07-2008 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by paul

I see the list of individuals for ireland is here : Google Adwords - Advertising Individuals Ireland - whoisaGAP and companies is here : Google Adwords - Advertising Companies Ireland - whoisaGAP but I don't know how up to date they are .

You can verify the listings ...

**Redfly** · 22-07-2008 12:48 PM

My little sister was doing some part time work for us and I made her do the exam about 2 months back.

To this day, she has never managed an adwords account or even seen what an AdWords account looks like. She passed. All she did was run therough the quizzes quickly and did the exam.

The exam is a joke and can be passed by anyone. I mean ANYONE. It's "open book" so assuming you can type faster than a quadruple amputee you can find the answers in the help section anyway.

Only benefit is perceived authority by using the logo and even at that, it's pretty pricey.

**CiaranR** · 22-07-2008 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Redfly

My little sister was doing some part time work for us and I made her do the exam about 2 months back.

To this day, she has never managed an adwords account or even seen what an AdWords account looks like. She passed. All she did was run therough the quizzes quickly and did the exam.

The exam is a joke and can be passed by anyone. I mean ANYONE. It's "open book" so assuming you can type faster than a quadruple amputee you can find the answers in the help section anyway.

Only benefit is perceived authority by using the logo and even at that, it's pretty pricey.

I presume having a Dave standing over her shoulder helped a lot too

I've been meaning to do this for ages, Think I'll deffo do it now, given your review dave!

**Redfly** · 22-07-2008 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Frodo

I presume having a Dave standing over her shoulder helped a lot too

Not at all! She did it all by herself. Although, she is one of the smartest people I know.

I remember doing it the first time, was like being back in college.

If you do any sort of affiliate marketing using paid search, keeping up the minimum spend will not be a problem.

**3rsales** · 23-07-2008 09:49 AM

The Exam is probably for people to get credibility. We have a marketing MSc, Simona, who passed the exam, and that does add credibility when you offer the service - but lets be honest, it just scrapes the surface.

Until you have actually being doing this stuff for a few years, and got the experience of "failing", then and only then will you start becoming an expert - until we focused and had at least 10 customers running together, were we able to really start doing it right.

By doing it right - I mean saving clients money on adwords, getting a higher CTR and most importantly - getting conversions - because without conversions you get nothing, nada - its all just vanity otherwise.

So what differentiates one guy from an other - lets face it the guys at Redfly are great and so are many others. And I am not going to post a link to our service here, because that would be too blatant

!

Peter

**Forbairt** · 23-07-2008 09:55 AM