A Search Engine Watch Forums thread reveals the shocking truth that Google has excluded Canadians from qualifying for the Google Advertising Professionals program. Which countries qualify? Well there is a list here of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) locations "are eligible to participate in the Google Advertising Professionals programme." Yup, no Canada.

JenSense, a Canadian, is upset about this, and rightly so. Heck, some of the most well-known and respected AdWords experts are based in Canada. She said, bolded for emphasis;

Why are non-US and non-EMEA countries excluded from becoming a Qualfied Company? I have no idea, but for whatever reason, it wasn't simply an oversight. I wouldn't have thought that Canadian advertisers would have been considered small enough fish that they'd chose to ignore all of them!

One of the most well known AdWords experts, Andrew Goodman, replied to the thread, yes he is a Canadian;

Oh, it's retarded alright. I suppose that's one of the reasons we're not all madly passing the test right now. For company/agency level folks, it's insulting to be told that all you need to do to be qualified is to write a test that any old individual could write. But when you can't even qualify as a group, that's even sillier.

He wants an apology an an explanation from Google. Rightly so...

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

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