Jerry Work here. I think I never commented on my daughter. She had surgery last week to fix a kidney reflux problem, which basically caused her urine to flow the wrong way. The surgery went well, although there will probably be some additional future treatment required. So that’s the update there.

I mentioned in our last blog post that we have begun programming our own Google paid search management application. I thought I would spend the next couple of blog posts discussing that process. This may turn into a whole series of posts chronicling the development process. We’ll see.

First off, Google does not make it easy to figure out how to use its Google AdWords API and Web Services. There is an API reference, although one critical page of information didn’t seem to be linked to from anywhere (that I could find) and was only discovered by searching the API reference web site. And the code samples are very sparse. It almost seems as if Google wants to make things difficult.

I have also searched online for code samples or tutorials that discuss using the AdWords API and have found next to nothing. So we’re having to do things the hard way – by trying things out to see what works. We are building the application on the .NET 2.0 platform. At one time I was a certified .NET C# developer. That was several years ago, but once I got into the development process it all (well, maybe not ALL) started coming back to me.

So the main hat I am wearing in the company right now is that of application developer. Chris is really keeping the company going for the most part, while I spend as much time as I possibly can programming. I am using Microsoft’s free Visual Web Developer software to build the application. I have to say, I am impressed by the little program. It is barebones but much simpler to use that full-blown Visual Studio. And since our application is meant to run on-line, it works just fine for our purposes. One thing that I love about it is that I can easily run the application on my development workstation without placing the code on a server. I just click the run button and it launches the site in my browser, running on its own built-in server.

So far, the application is communicating with the Google server, returning data related to ad groups, bids, and so fourth. The very first time I actually made that work, I was thrilled, even though all it was was a text string with the name of an ad group. We’ve already come a long way since that point, with nicely formatted data grids that contain all kinds of data, including performance data.

In our next blog post, we’ll talk more about the challenges of pulling this off and where we’re going with it. Until then, if you need some help managing your paid or natural search marketing campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.