What is a Google AdWords Professional?
Internet Marketing Dictionary | Google AdWords Professional:GAP

A Google AdWords Professional is someone who manages Google AdWords accounts, usually for clients, who has passed a basic AdWords exam that tests you for competence. The exam is quite easy and doesn't really set you apart from the crowd. It is run by Google.

To help pass the exam Google provides lots of online support for its AdWords system and all this training is available to anyone using AdWords. The Google AdWords professional exams tend to focus on the mechanics of the AdWords system and whilst this is an important facet of a competent AdWords Consultant's capabilities, what you need in addition is business understanding and the ability to use the data you get from the AdWords system to manage the profitability of your advertising as a whole.

A good AdWords consultant will seek to understand your business and work with you to optimise your account.

The reason why the GAP or Google AdWords Professional program was started was that Google was aware that if it was going to penetrate the market effectively it would need help to reach the long tail of smaller businesses that it couldn't reach on its own. Many people set themselves up as AdWords managers but in a lot of cases they weren't terribly competent and this held back Google's progress. So the GAP program was launched as a basic quality measure that people would only be awarded if they knew at least the basics of the system.

Google recognises now that the qualification is too low level and may be planning on developing a more sophisticated test of AdWords competence.