Google Wants You to Fail Your Adwords Exam

I just finished taking my Adwords Professional exam in order to re-up my “Adwords Professional Certification” and I have determined that Google wants you to fail! I have some beef with this thing and here is why.

First off, I had to pay $50 AGAIN to re-certify myself. I’ve already had to do this once, why did I have to pay again? Does Google really need my $50? I’m not sure why, but that just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t have to pay to renew my license, why should they make me pay to renew their made up certification? Ok, my real beef isn’t with the cost of the re-certification, it is the exam itself.

While Google has a great resource center for you to study adwords and take some practice quizzes, it doesn’t help much when the questions aren’t updated on the actual exam! I finished this exam with a pretty good amount of time leftover so I went back through and looked at some of the questions that I thought were ridiculous and even took some screencaps of some to prove that I’m not completely crazy.

For example, this question regarding Google image ads: As you can see the question asks for 3 responses. Now, A & B are pretty obvious but C is definitely wrong because image ads don’t show on Google searches, and D. is definitely wrong because according to the Adwords Help Center that maximum number of allowed images is 500 not 50!

Another example is this question which as you can see by the red highlight boxes says “Select ALL that Apply”. I may not be the world’s smartest man but I do know that with RADIO buttons you can only choose 1! Its not a major issue but just a real annoyance to me.

Finally, near the end of the exam it was asking about mobile ads which I admittingly have little experience with at this point in time, so when I ran into these questions I tried to consult the Adwords Help Center, the only problem with that was…. IT’S IN ITALIAN! Yes, the English section on Mobile ads is in Italian which I personally don’t think is the most conducive to helping people pass this test. I’m from NORTH CAROLINA, not Milan!

For some reason, Google wants you to fail!

Todd Malicoat has an excellent, albeit it slightly less bitter, post with some tips about re-upping your certification for those who need to prepare.

If you are wondering, don’t worry, I got a 95.6% 🙂

Here are some more bogus questions for the Adwords Professional Exam:
Item 79 of 111 Using AdWords, advertisers can target their ads by _____.
A. postal code
B. telephone area code
C. latitude and longitude
D. a user’s age as specified in their user preferences on Google

–I’m pretty sure you can target by postal code and Latitude and longitude!

Item 103 of 111 When you have multiple ads in the same Ad Group, you can view all of these ads _____.
A.on the Campaign Summary page
B.below your keyword list on the Ad Group detail page
C.above your keyword list on the Ad Group detail page
D.next to your keyword list on the Ad Group detail page

-An example of an outdated question. If you want to look at all of your ads at once, Google has put them into a nice and neat TABBED format. The answer is B since this was the old way, but if you haven’t been using Adwords for that long, you’d have no way of knowing this.

Which statement about ads created with double byte characters is true?
A.They must not use single byte characters.
B.They must have 16 characters per ad text.
C.They must use single byte characters for punctuations and currency.
D.They must be triggered only by keywords created with double byte characters.
Good luck finding that answer in the help center, I think I guessed B.

Grouping keywords in a single Ad Group that shares a central theme helps improve performance the most when ads are shown on _____.
A.AOL
B.Google
C.search pages
D.content pages
Does anyone want to explain the difference of A,B and C to me?

Your client wants to target potential customers in France, and English speakers around the world using only one campaign. Which option would reach this audience?
A.Target all countries and all languages.
B.Target the country France only. Target languages English and French.
C.Target the countries France and the United States. Target ads to English only.
D.Target the United Kingdom and the United States. Target languages French and English.
None of these seem like the right answer to me.

If you manage several AdWords accounts and have created a standard password for all of your client’s accounts, which additional information is needed to access the client account?
A.a customer ID number for the account
B.a unique password created for the account
C.the unique login email address for the account
D.the credit card information on file for the account
Thats what the MCC is for!

What is a benefit of using broad matches with negative keywords, instead of exact match keywords by themselves?
A.Your ad will attract more traffic.
B.You don’t have to update the keyword list.
C.You can create keyword lists more quickly.
D.You can be certain which keyword the user searched.

A & C seem correct here.

And Finally, even the tutorial quizzes need to be updated, one answer says that if on invoicing you have 15 days to pay to avoid suspension of your account when in the Adwords help system is says “oogle reserves the right to suspend or close down your AdWords account if we do not receive payment within 30 business days of the monthly invoice date and/or you exceed the monthly credit limit.”