When a big client wants to advertise in "search," they probably end up in Google's own portfolio.

And it makes perfect sense: why pay more for an AdWords campaign when you can just pay for the clicks and have the rest of the work done for you by the same guys that invented the system in the first place! After all, if they can't do it better, who can?

Well... you for instance, or me, or pretty much anyone with a GAP credential...

The thing is Google teaches people the basics of how to do ad campaigns in AdWords. From there the GAP is free to find out the best tricks and experiment with pretty much anything in order to seize the experience that will make him or her a great AdWords specialist.

There are many skills involved in that, and you need to basically have copy skills, analytics skills, do tests, read and understand statistics, understand niche markets, understand product lingo and target audiences, etc... the list goes on and on.  

For sure the guys and girls at Google pretty much have all these skills and rock at AdWords. Well, no, at least from my experience, and I've seen several AdWords campaigns designed by Google employees. 

They are mediocre, because:

• The ad copy is bland and unimaginative and doesn't include important keywords
• The ads are often repeated and not targeted to the chosen keywords or theme
• The text often spills from line to line, and there is no call to action
• The campaign structure is often misleading and not focused enough, mixing very different keywords together
• They don't use negative keywords at the campaign level or in every ad group, as they should

They don't Suck with a capital S, mind you, but you'd expect much better from Google, especially in campaigns that sometimes ranged in the 50-60 thousand dollars or more, each. 

It's mind warping why they don't follow their own guidelines... and that pretty much results in badly written, poorly structured campaigns.

But its a chance for the rest of us, right?

Well, no. Only if we can get those clients, which unfortunately is the hardest part of the process. The clients mostly trust their accounts to big media companies, which unload the work to Google and that's that. 

Anyway, I find it interesting how the little guy can do a better job at AdWords than big G.

Do you agree? Have you seen this happen? I'd love some feedback!