Tag: AdWords

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AdWords Makes It Hard to View Reports

Effective September 15th AdWords is changing who can be emailed reports. In fact after that date AdWords won’t even be emailing you a report, rather will email you a link to view the report online.

For me this has totally wreaked havoc in the way I do reporting. I have an assistant who does reports for me. She takes the Excel data and pastes it into a letter where I have noted important comments about an account monthly. Previously she was emailed a zip file by AdWords on the first of every month.

Now I will have to add her as a read only user on every AdWords account so that she will be able to now manually and repetitively login and download a report. Worse yet is that there is no real column control on the report as there was before which means that adjusting the columns in Excel becomes a task that must be done for each report for each client.

Man, I hate this change! I have tried inviting her to my My Client Center, but that does not give the report access she needs, so I will now need to add her to each individual account. I understand the security issues involved but AdWords should have polled professionals such as myself before making this seriously bad change!

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Signs Your AdWords Account Has Been Hacked

I just started up a client account in AdWords which had been dormant since 2009. When I logged in I told the client to me it appeared that the account had been hacked. This was verified by Google one day later and a credit was applied to the client’s credit card.

So how did I know the AdWords account had been hacked?

  1. Daily budget was set at $630 per day. That is a spend of $18,900 per 30 days. Previously the budget was $63/day.
  2. Keywords hidden inside an ad group with the correct name were payday loan related.
  3. The URL and ad text in the ad group had been changed from the client’s website.

This can happen to anyone. If you are not going to use your AdWords account it is best to either close it or to remove the credit card information.

In this case the client only got hit with a $10.00 charge before AdWords shut the account off. The last hacked account I saw had a $10,000 charge on their credit card for fraudulent clicks in less than seven days, so it is very important to watch what is happening in AdWords or better yet hire an account manager who will keep a careful eye on your account.

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Google AdWords’ New Certification Program for Account Managers

You may not be aware, but Google has a new certification program for professional account managers such as myself. The old program called certified account managers Google AdWords Qualified Professionals or Google AdWords Qualified Individuals.

Now, Google has a new program called Google AdWords Certification. All professionals previously certified as Qualified Professionals, Qualified Companies or Qualified Individuals have six months to retest in the new program. Additionally, the account manager must now pass two tests instead of one. One is the AdWords Fundamental Exam and the other is one of the manager’s choice. The topics for the second exam are on search placement, the content network, or on Google Analytics.

I have already passed the Fundamentals Exam with a score of 97% and am starting to study for the Search exam. Additionally Google states that all certified businesses and professionals will need to take the Fundamental exam once a year and the higher level exam once every two years. Instead of retesting every two years as in the old program. This makes sure that all account managers that are certified in Google’s program are up-to-date with the changes Google enacts on their system.

As a business owner you should be aware of these changing certifications, so you can make sure your own account manager is certified with the knowledge to help you.

I have to say that additionally individuals with poor knowledge of AdWords will be weeded out by these new stronger certification programs and standards. The Google AdWords Certification program will mean that your account manager not only has the knowledge but the real world skill to effectively manage your account.

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Nancy McCord Proves Mastery of Google AdWords!

Yesterday Nancy McCord proved again her mastery of Google AdWords by passing the new Google AdWords Certification Fundamentals Exam with a score of 97%. This shows that she doesn’t just have understanding of the Google AdWords system, but mastery!

Nancy has successfully taken the Google AdWords exam for certification now four times over a period of eight years. This new exam is just one of two she will take to migrate her Google AdWords Qualified Individual certification into the new Google AdWords Certification and Google AdWords Partner program.

Upon passing the second exam, Nancy will not only achieve the new status of Google AdWords Certification, but will be able to certify her entire business as a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

If you are looking for an expert on Google AdWords, look no further. You want someone to set up and manage your account who is not only qualified, but shows mastery, that person is Nancy McCord.