So I am now officially an Adwords Qualified Professional…woohoo! Just took the test this morning, so I figured it would be helpful to put together a quick study guide for anyone considering taking the exam.

Now, I won’t go into too much detail, since I don’t want to piss Google off, but since I was taken off guard by some of the questions, I think it’s only fair I share my opinion of it.
First off, I did study in the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam Learning Center - but I basically did a review of the outline, skimmed the info and only read indepth on topics I felt I needed a little extra help in.

That was a mistake. While I am confident in my ability to use and build Adwords campaigns for our client’s benefits, there are still details of the program I could learn more about, and that certainly came up within the test.

For example, while I am familiar with Adwords’s billing policies, I don’t have the details memorized. I would suggest understanding their billing cycle before you take the test. Actually, my biggest recommendation is to simply study the Learning Center topics and take any example quizzes you can find.

Adwords Qualified Professional Study Guide

But if you’re like me, and your experience is more with the actual management and optimization of campaigns, here’s a particular list of subjects you may want to work on:

1. Billing details, such as the billing cycle, where to go to change preferences, etc.
2. The tabs/navigation of the Adwords interface and what each section includes.
3. The pros and cons of the different keyword match types
4. Editorial and policy guidelines for trademarks, ad formats, etc.
5. Different ways of “targeting” your campaign
6. The difference between Search Network and Content Network, and their individual policies. (Hint: Look into any difference in rules or approval policies in the Google Search Network between Google search results pages and the search results pages of other properties within the search network).

I think that’s enough for now – if I give too much away, Google might revoke my Google Adwords Qualified Professional status and I worked too dang hard to give up my pretty logo now!

Speaking of which, apparently it takes 1-3 days for the passed exam to show up in your Company profile. Guess I’ll just have to be patient.

As the resident PPC player here at PMX, it’s up to me to stay on top of what’s going on in the world of Pay Per Click. So of course it was interesting for me to read about how Google Adsense will now accept ads from qualified third party networks which will “help you generate the most profit for every ad that appears on your site, whether the ads come from AdWords advertisers or Google-certified ad networks,” according to the Google Adsense Blog.

While I suppose that’s great news for Adsense users, as a PPC Specialist, I’m more worried about what it means for my Adwords campaigns, specifically when it comes to the content network. More competition for ad space means higher CPCs obviously…but I’m trying to wrap my head around any other repercussions for my content network campaigns, either good or bad.

If I’m having to mess more with CPC bidding to keep my ads in prominent positions, it’s obviously going to increase some time spent on PPC management initially…if the third-party networks come running to jump on board that is. Supposedly Google will have some pretty high standards in the certification process.

So what does everybody else think? Besides the obvious increase in competition and CPCs, how else will our Adwords campaigns be affected? I’m particularly interested in anyone who can think of some positive changes it could have.

I suppose one pro for us Adword-ers is that if potential revenue earnings for Adsense publishers go up, more and more people might jump on the Adsense bandwagon, which means more sites for us to advertise on and more impressions for our ads- but I dunno, seems like a bit of a stretch for me.

I know that it’s been in the blogosphere often during the past few months that Google was displaying sponsored results among SELECT google image searches while users were logged into their google accounts, but now it appears to be mainstream.

I was actually just doing a search for our new Universal Search Optimization Chart to see if it was showing in google images and noticed the sponsored ads appearing.

The kicker is that I wasn’t even signed into google, which means that these results may now show all the time.  What does this mean for the industries that internet marketing focus on? What about artists and others who want to sell their “prints” and things?  Will Google offer to sell them for you?  Does this ruin the algorithmic benefit to Google image search in any way?

If you have ever wanted to see what kind of competition your geo-targeted adwords campaigns have in certain market, the Google Ad Targeting Preview Tool is what you need.

I have outlined in the video how you can see where your ads are placed in certain cities around the nation as well as spy on your competition a bit.

Here’s a text recap:

1. Go to The Google Adwords Targeting Preview Tool
2. Enter your keyword into the box on the left
3. Select the state or country or territory on the top right that you want to “spy” on
4. Refine the location to as detailed as the city level

Let me know if you have questions or other applications below.

Today. Is. Election Day. Because no one has told you yet… get out there and VOTE!

Now that I have encouraged you to stand in line at the polls, I guess I too need to step away from my desk and do my civic duty. Before I logout for the day and go stand in line with countless others getting their vote on, I thought it’d be nice to recap how the candidates used internet marketing in their campaigns.

I wasn’t THE first person to blog about this, but I did write a post here on the ProspectMX blog in September discussing 2008 Election Internet Marketing. If you’re into reading about election marketing, you might like to check it out.

Here’s some more reading on internet marketing and the election. Oh… and don’t try to decipher my vote by reading these posts. By no means should the links below be taken as an indicator of who I’m voting for. Thanks.

Now… onto the Link Love!

• Election Day Paid Search Comparison (Direct Online Marketing)
• Swing State Comparison for McCain and Obama (Hitwise)
• Obama McCain SEO - My 2008 Election Prediction (Portent Interactive)
• Obama McCain Keyphrases Used On Search Engines (Planet Chiropractic)
• Why Obama Kills It Online, McCain Not So Much (Stephen Espinosa)