Yes! This logo was officially provided to us after we officially passed the tests, met the other criteria regarding amount of spend managed and amount of time managing accounts, and now

Get Found First is a Google Adwords Certified Partner!

Google used to have a Google Adwords Qualified Individual Status, and a Google Adwords Qualified Company, and for a few more months companies can rest on those laurels.

Rather than wait around, and to be a leader in the industry, we went ahead and became one of the first Google Adwords Certified Partners.  Here are the criteria to become a Google Certified Partner:

“Google AdWords Certified Partners are not Google employees, but rather are online marketing professionals, agencies, and other individuals such as search engine marketers (SEMs), search engine optimizers (SEOs), and marketing consultants. They have been certified by Google to manage AdWords accounts. To become qualified, professionals must demonstrate an in-depth understanding of AdWords by passing exams, and they must meet all our qualification guidelines, Different professionals have different areas of expertise, so you should talk to them or look at their profile page to get a better understanding of their service levels and specializations.”

To elaborate, the Google exams are timed for 120 minutes and there are 120 multiple choice questions.   The first is a Fundamentals exam, and the second is an Advanced exam.  Each company must have 2 individuals connected to the account that pass with an 85% or higher score on each test.  Having taken the tests, I can assure you that they make the test hard enough that not just any Joe Schmoe can sign up, pay the $50 to take the test, and pass.  Questions relate to language targeting, trademark laws, bidding, adrank, quality score, and much more.

So what does all this mean to you? Get Found First has all of the tools to be your PPC management outsource solution.

Have you ever set up a campaign for a client and got the question, “How much will I be paying each click?” How do you respond? Many times you might turn to Google’s Keyword Tool and look at CPC’s. But how accurate is Google’s Keyword Tool CPC estimator?  We’ve taken a look at actual CPC’s from our clients and matched them up with what Google’s estimates.

Before we look at the stats it’s important to note a few things about Google’s CPC Estimator. In Google’s words:

“If you don’t supply a Max CPC and Daily Budget for these estimates, AdWords will estimate your performance using a CPC that is predicted to always place your ad in positions 1-3 with an unlimited budget to capture all available impressions.”

Based off of that, we made sure that the words that we looked at were all in the 1-3 spot. Here are the stats for just 6 of our words:

Between them all there was a 44% difference between actual CPC and Google’s estimated CPC! It’s obvious that there are other factors in the difference in numbers. The AdWordsPro(a Google employee) clarified this on the Adwords help forum:

“Please know that it is simply an estimate - and in no way intended to be a guarantee. Your actual cost per click will literally vary from one click to the next, and depend on many factors that the tool can not know – such as how well targeted your ads are to the keyword, how well written the ads are, how many competitors you have in the moment the ad appears, etc.”

We can conclude from this that YOU CAN’T TRUST GOOGLE’S NUMBERS! Next time you’re looking for estimates on average CPC you might be out of luck. Although this can be a good place to start, you can only really know once you start your PPC campaign.