Taking the GAP exam

Posted: September 24th, 2008 | Author: Mihai Bojin | Filed under: Adwords, Google, PPC, SEM | Tags: Adwords, adwords exam, exam, gap, Google, gqi, qualified individual |

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 !

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