Search Engine Journal

If you are still implementing Adsense referral units on your blogs/sites and you’re outside of North America, Latin America and Japan and still manage to pull in a significant flow income through successful Adsense sign-ups,then you might get pissed at this new announcement from the Inside Adsense blog.Google Adsense is phasing out the Adsense Referral units program from publishers who are located outside of the said regions. Apparently, the turn-around of successful Adsense sign-ups from countries outside of the three regions mentioned above, is not significant enough and is not performing well for Google’s benefits. The gradual phase out will happen soon and before you know it, the Adsense Referral Button will no longer appear on your Adsense publisher account. Take note, these Adsense Referral units refer to units that promote Adsense sign-ups and does not include other Referral products that pay out publishers.

Now, if you are located in North America, Latin America and Japan, you are not spared from these policy changes as well. Although Google is not vent on closing the Adsense Referral units in these regions, publishers will however suffer from a “mild” change. Specifically, the payout for referring a user who generates $100 with Adsense in the first 180 days will return to its previous rate of $100 from the current $250 which includes a $5 bonus.

Although the reason behind this change in payout rate was not explained, I guess it’s pretty obvious that the Adsense Referral units are no longer generating that much in terms of successful sign-ups. Or perhaps Adsense in itself is no longer generating new advertisers especially now that there are other viable online advertising programs options than the almighty Google Adsense.