Google Providing Workshops for Small Businesses in Ireland, or just some PR?

I caught an interview on RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland show with a Google staff member discussing workshops they are providing to help teach businesses how to be more competitive using the internet. I had a feeling that this would be a way for them to push their AdWords pay per click advertising programme, as that is their main way of getting revenue.

Google may be resorting to publicising this on our national broadcaster as many small businesses are finding that as more competitors are using the AdWords programmes they are having to spend more to get the same results that they did a year ago. I'm getting more and more emails from website owners asking about getting better organic search results, as PPC advertising is getting too costly. It's likely that as more and more businesses become savvy about search engine optimization and online advertising it will be harder, and more expensive, to get the top positions that will better ensure a good level of visitors to the site. As an SEO expert, I guess you wouldn't be suprised that I think that you should prioritise your spending on SEO to help get good results in the longterm -- over PPC which will need to be continually paid out. Overall I do think a mix of both can be good for you online marketing.

Back to the workshops. Morning Ireland, who referred to the workshop as "Survival of the Fastest", posted a link to the website of the Small Firms Association, who Google are running the workshops with. There is only one Google workshop listed there and it's fully booked:

• April 16th: SFA/Google Online Advertising & Adwords (Advanced Knowledge) (Free of charge and includes Lunch!)

Ah-ha! Googled and found an RTE news story about on "Survival of the Fastest" that was from yesterday 9th April 2009! It seems that Ronan Harris, director of online sales and operations at Google, addressed participants at a Small Firms Association event. "Harris said: 'Survival of the Fastest is the new game in town. It is the companies that ignore trends such as technological advances and shifts in customer behaviour that are finding their markets eaten into by nimbler, hungrier rivals.'" (Nothing mentioned in that piece about workshops.)

Further searching on the SFA site shows that there was a basic AdWords course yesterday, so this must be the event Ronan Harris was speaking at. Seems that the Google and/or SFA PR machines are in overdrive and causing a bit of confusion! Morning Ireland also posted the email address press-ie@google.com, so I await further details. I do hope that this bit of PR wasn't just to promote a couple annual workshops that are already fully booked!

Please comment here if you know of any other workshops at Google, because I'd love to go! I know there are a number of other AdWords workshops (mainly in Dublin), but it'd be great to hear it from 'the horses mouth' and get a look inside the offices of Google.