Dear AdWords ...
My AdWords account was suspended so I decided to write an open letter to Google after not getting very far with their customer service.
Google Geocoding Example
After having a hard time with the Yahoo GeoCoding service I decided to plug in the Google GeoCoding service. I found the it not too hard to find a solution that seemed pretty solid for letting users validate an address before submission. This method works great for the Yard Sale software I've developed. The only downside seems to be that google will return you the center of the city when it can't find the exact address. I guess it's up to the user at this point to figure out Googles mistaken and they should try it again.
Text-Link-Ads SEO Tool
Recently I was looking link exchanges that would be relative to the sites I was working on. I found this process so time consuming that I eventually put up a link exchange request form on the sites I felt could really use the exposure and left it at that. Figuring if an SEO was doing some of the same searches I did, there would be quality submissions over time. To date, I have a few spammers, but a few good links got submitted that I ended up posting. The only downside it seems is that most of the submissions sent have your link sitting on a "Links" page and not nestled under the homepage with some page rank. I guess you take what you can get in the SEO world.
A colleague of mine showed me Text Link Ads, a company that brokers static links from various websites. Now I can plunk down $20 a month and get a static quality link and save a lot of time exchange searching. The site does a very good job of telling you what the Alexa rating and Google Rank are for a site. The search interface works much like you'd expect, it brings back results matching all keywords and then shows results with any of your keywords. Once you purchase your link, then you are given the URL, I found this kind of annoying. I'd like to do some simple SEO analysis on a website before I decide if it's worth paying for. I've also found the that Google Rank can sometimes be different on the live site compared to what's advertised in the preview. The site does have a 24 hour cancellation policy where as you can cancel your subscription if you don't like the spot or website you've just been placed on. I guess this is fine, but going through the whole purchasing process to get the URL doesn't really seem worth while.
Overall the site was a pretty good bargain, I have it running on a few of my domains. I've been able to sell 5 slots over five domains in just under a week so the buyers are out there. Since I am purchasing a few links as well as selling them, it lets me get some link popularity essentially for free.
Also, I took the liberty of converting their affiliate User Control from C# to VB.NET.
Text-Link-Ads UserControl
Converted Text-Link-Ads.com's C# affiliate user control to Vb.Net and added some formatting features. Setup a Text-Link-Ads Control Download page.
Rental Property App
New RageWare app. Displays listings for rental units on a city level basis.