Posted: September 30th, 2008 | Author: Mihai Bojin | Filed under: Algorithms | Tags: data structure, hash table, linked list, tree | 1 Comment »
I found this post this morning, about Augmenting data structures. It’s an interesting subject and lecture, although it has around 1hour and 23 minutes and you have to have the time to watch it.
In addition it has some notes.
The post is from an MIT course and is mostly about trees, linked lists, hash tables.
If you know similar posts about algorithms be sure to post them in the comments section !
Posted: September 24th, 2008 | Author: Mihai Bojin | Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC, SEM | Tags: Adwords, adwords exam, exam, gap, Google, gqi, qualified individual | 1 Comment »
Today I took a courage plunge and took the GAP exam, early in the morning… and I passed!
(If you don’t know what the GAP exam is, you can find out on the Adwords Learning Center).
It wasn’t neither hard nor easy. I have to say that you probably won’t pass this exam if you have no practical experience with running adwords campaigns.
I myself am relatively new to Adwords having only 3 months of experience in running campaigns, but these 3 months and the fact that I explored every possible option in the Adwords Account, have helped me understand alot and answer general topic questions.
The exam is graded from 0 to 100% with a 75% grade required to pass.
My exam had 109 questions in 90 minutes. I scored around 85% and I am satisfied with the result. If given more time I would have probably scored higher, but I will have the chance next year as the exam has to be taken once a year to maintain the certification. The test is delivered through Prometric.
I have to note that I had some wrong/faulty questions in my exam. I encountered:
- Incomplete questions;
- Two same answers but only one choice;
- unlabeled answers;
- Also the exam website failed during the test and I had around 1 minute of lost time; not much but nevertheless important for the overall experience;
It seems that I am not the only one that experienced issues with the GAP exam.
By the way, because I wasn’t paying attention in the beginning of my Adwords Experience, I omitted the fact that I need an MCC acount for the 90 days / 1000$ spent requirements (besides taking the exam) in order to achieve the Google Qualified Individual (or GQI) certification.
I have at least until December 15 to spend 1000$ of my hard earned currency! 
UPDATE: Right now I am a Google Qualified Individual as you can see by this logo:
You can see the exact certification requirements for becoming a Google Qualified Individual here.
In closing I wish you good luck in taking the exam if you are preparing for it and please post your experience with the GAP exam in the comments section, thanks !
