Article Outline
- The questions from all the tests are out there
- “What about the answers to the Google AdWords, Analytics, and Bing Ads exam questions?” Well, that’s another story
- If you really, really, want to consult those sites and their answers, go with the following:
- In the end, if you need the sites to help you with free Google certification tests, you’re going to be clueless when you actually get to spend a budget
There’s a fun debate out in the AdWords community as to whether or not anyone needs to take the Google Analytics & AdWords certification exams (and, yes, Bing Ads, too). There’s no discount for being certified. Studying the Google and Bing tutorials doesn’t provide much in the way of a real strategy, be it branding, direct response, remarketing, or mobile. The platforms’ tutorial lessons read like dampened stereo instructions. “Here’s how the…gurgle-gurgle…tools work…gulp.”
To me, I still lean towards recommending being certified. It helps you keep apprised to all the tools and their latest updates. It also is the first step into getting your company to qualify in Google Partners, where there’s 25,000+ members and at least 45 of them that are great to talk to. I consider it continuing education.
It’s the Google Partners certification, and the occasional job offer, that probably provide the biggest incentives to pass at least the two required Google AdWords certification exams by any means.
If collection agencies are beating you down or the cell phone companies are threatening to blow up your phone, literally, and you need the AdWords certification to feed your starving newborn, below are ways you can circumnavigate & expedite your AdWords, Google Analytics, and Bing Ads certification process.
The questions from all the tests are out there
Typically, all the questions to all the tests are online on blog sites. They’re not provided by Google or Bing unless you’re taking the test. To acquire the questions in advance, affiliates, AdSense whores, and the like presumably:
- clean their computer cache
- clean the browser cache and use a browser they don’t typically use
- restrict access to their machines using PeerBlock or a like device
- go to a coffee house in another town
- make a few new free Google Accounts
- sign up for Google Partners and Bing Ads (both are free)
- start up the tests
- and either:
- take screenshots of each test
- write the questions & answer choices down on a separate doc
- Rinse & Repeat a few times, because the questions change, typically, yearly, though always without notice
“Why would anyone do that?”
Probably to get cheap traffic from folks like y’all who are looking for the answers. In exchange, they pump you for ad views and, on occasionally, for products. There’s a chance that others do it for notes, but I’d question that.
Hell, we even found a guy who’d take the test for others. You have to be a special kind of desperate to share the credentials to your Google ID in order to let someone take a free test for you.
We’ve also found a few sites that got shut down. We think it’s because Google shuts them down due to copyright infringement. So, there’s that to consider.
“What about the answers to the Google AdWords, Analytics, and Bing Ads exam questions?” Well, that’s another story.
Here’s a few things to remember:
- Neither Google or Bing provides the answers : it would render the tests useless. They don’t even tell you what questions you got wrong after the test.
- Neither Google or Bing leaks the answers: anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you
- If you’re not getting the answers from Google or Bing – who won’t provide anyone the answers – you’re not getting the answers:
In short, the answers aren’t out there.
If happen-chance hooks up with a once-in-a-lifetime-moment, thereby allowing the answers to be spilt online, they’ll only be relevant for a short period of time. If Google acts like Google, then they would change the questions and answers by the end of this sentence.
As for Bing, well, you might have a little more time.
“But, but, those websites publish the answers.”
If you do a quick google search for, “adwords certification exam answers” and check those websites, you’ll find that they publish answers, but not the answers. They didn’t get them from either Google or Bing. The blogger sites provide their best guess to the answers,, and from what we saw, most of the answers are what we’d pick, but they are not the answers. Don’t just assume they’re all right.
If you really, really, want to consult those sites and their answers, go with the following:
- Go with answers that provide documentation from a google.com site : Pretty much every answer in the tests have a point, rule, or parable on the Google.com AdWords sites that justify the answer. This is especially true for the basic questions, account set up and the like.
- Go with answers that have community support and peer review : Now this can be internally gamed, but go with sites that have poll questions or reviews attached to each question, where the visitors can vote on whether or not they agree with the answer to the question. Bonus if they have comments open, which isn’t often.
- Go with answers that offer some sound semblance of an explanation : Some bloggers take a couple seconds to at least explain their answer if they don’t do any of the other options.
- Skip the rest: If the site can’t take the time to explain the answer, what makes you think they took time to make sure they were right?
If you really, really, really need help on how to use them when taking the test…
Open a private browser, leave it on a separate screen, and start typing the questions into a Bing search (
Yes, Bing. Seriously, you want to cheat Google and use their search engine to do it? Really? C’mon, man.
The only way those websites should help you in studying and taking the test is to help you pace you and remind you of all the possible answers. That’s the only thing of value we found: consulting these sites during the test, you’ll find yourself a couple times murmuring, “Oh, shit! I didn’t see that answer,” At that point, they’re helpful.
Otherwise, without proper preparation you’ll either become co-dependent on the question sites or you’ll overthink your answers.
In the end, you could use the blogger sites and pass the required number of tests using their answers, but if you need the sites to help you with free Google certification tests, you’re going to be clueless when you actually have to spend a budget
Google AdWords & Google Analytics are perhaps the two most community-resourced platforms of all time. There are tutorials, videos, flashcards, and webinars out there to help study. Here’s a short list of ones we still use:
- Google Partners Resources (in you Google Partners): they have the lessons and tests that can also be found in the AdWords support pages.
- AdWords YouTube channel: don’t just think you’ll watch a few videos and you’ll be ready. Most of them are a survey of aspects. They don’t go into much detail.
- PPCHero.com: Great thought leader site. PPC tutorials, how-to’s, strategies and tactics.
- IPassExam.com: we buy the whole Google Partners study program as well as the Bing Ads package and take all the tests, over and over again. By the way, for the of you who are Americans, those “s”‘es in iPassExam.com questions aren’t misspellings. We believe the site is British, but we haven’t looked to verify.
- What about Bing Ads training?: Speaking of stereo instructions. I couldn’t get through them, and I read Kierkegaard as a hobby. I just used iPassExam.com.
Take the time to learn the platforms because even if you pass this year, you’ll have to re-up on the Google AdWords certs next year. For Google Analytics, you’ll have to renew every 18 months. For Bing Ads, well, we like to think of their platform as, “timeless.”
“Wait, how do you know all this?”
We researched them to see what the market was for proper, thorough Digital Marketing training and research resources.
BONUS: we’re conspiracy theorists
We firmly believe that Google either anonymously publishes some of those sites or copy their answers to track and see how many of their test takes provide the same exact answers. We wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. The idea wouldn’t be that far-fetched.
There is a correlation that could proxy as precedence in this theory
Google owns reCAPTCHA, which often used to provide two words that people have to answer when filling a form to prove they aren’t a bot. In each case, one of those words is used for validation, the other is to help Google improve their AI by training the machine what people think the obscure spellings are. It’s as incredible as it is frightening. There’s a great TED Talk video about it.
Point being: be cautious. Don’t assume they’re not paying attention.
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