January 2008 Archives

Google's recent announcement about changes to their adsense referral program was not particularly welcomed by publishers. Quelle surprise!

The company has now changed their policy slightly ... Not as much as we would have liked, but it's a move vaguely in the right direction.

From their official blog:

The changes to referrals promoting AdSense will now depend on where your users are located, regardless of your location as a publisher. You'll earn $100 for every user you refer to AdSense who is located in North America, Latin America or Japan when they generate $100 in AdSense revenue within 180 days and they remove all payment holds. You'll no longer be paid for users you refer who are located elsewhere. These changes will go into effect the last week of January.

So if you're still getting US traffic you can still monetise it ....

Of course the rest of your traffic has now been rendered useless

You'd have to wonder what goes on inside large companies like Google.

Wouldn't it make more sense to email their publishers BEFORE announcing a change on their blog, or at least at more or less the same time?

You'd have thought so ....

In any case Google sent out an email to its publishers this evening covering their withdrawal of Adsense referrals. It uses similar language to the blog post I mentioned already:

Hello,

We are writing to share some important information with you about
referrals to the AdSense product. As part of ongoing efforts to
optimize revenue opportunities for our publishers, we're
constantly experimenting with new revenue-enhancing features as
well as tweaking those products already available to our
publishers. This is the case for referral units directing visitors
to sign up for AdSense. After experimenting with this program
over the past year, we've concluded that there are other products
that are of higher value than this program to publishers in your
region. As a result, referral units for the AdSense program will
be retired in the coming weeks. Referrals to other products and
services remain unaffected.

If you're currently displaying referral units on your site
directing users to sign up for AdSense, read on below for details
about what to expect in the coming weeks. 

In early January, the option to add referral units directing users
to the AdSense product will no longer appear in your account. You
will continue to accrue earnings for all existing referrals yet to
generate $100 until late January, at which point the program will
be fully retired. Existing referral units will continue to appear
on your pages.

By the end of January, you should remove all referral units
directing users to AdSense from your pages. Referral units
that you do not remove will continue to be displayed on your pages
as normal, but conversions will no longer be recorded. We
suggest you replace the AdSense referrals with referrals to
another product or service or an additional ad unit.

Thank you for referring users to AdSense in the past. We
apologize for any inconvenience this news may cause.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

To add insult to injury the email is sent from a "noreply" address and has the charming footer "

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important new AdSense features."

Google haven't been in the "game" as long as companies such as Amazon, but they've grown incredibly fast. The Amazon Associates program has expanded and changed significantly over the past few years BUT you never see them telling you to remove ads. They don't remove promotions / products that earn them money (and obviously their publishers money)

Of course this isn't the first time that Google have made changes and it won't be the last. Being a "market leader" may protect them from user backlash for a while, but you'd wonder about the longterm effects.

According to the Google Adsense blog Adsense referrals ie. promoting the Adsense program, will no longer be available to non-US publishers.

While this may not upset people who weren't making any money from the product it will not be welcomed by those who were.

One user on Irish Webmaster Forum commented:

$1000 - $1500 a month gone for me. Just like that.

Some of the more prominent bloggers, like Darren Rowse, are more than a little upset:

The last line of the post on the AdSense blog which announces this shows just how out of touch the team that made this decision are with international publishers.

“We appreciate your support of this referral product, and hope it won’t cause you any inconvenience.”

You hope it won’t cause inconvenience? Are you serious?

As Darren points out, the Adsense policy change ignores a site's readership / traffic completely and focuses entirely on where the publisher resides. It's basically Google racism!

ShoeMoney also posts about it in his usual style

Even those not affected by the change are upset

So you can now schedule a bit of work on your sites to remove all the links to Adsense.

Thanks Google. We really love your corporate mantra - do no evil - you bring a whole new meaning to the English language