The official Inside Adsense blog has recently announced it is putting a cap on all non-Google product referrals in order to increase the value and quality of the referral network. IMO, that’s almost synonymous to fraudulent referral conversions.
By the way, this isn’t entirely new. AdSense is already limiting referral income to Publishers outside of the US (more specifically Asia). I have already gotten about a dozen conversions from referring Google Pack, Firefox with Google Toolbar and Picasa before but instead of getting the full $1 per referral, I’m only getting $0.10 — ten times below the advertised fee structure.
Now, Google AdSense is extending this rate limitations to other non-Google products too:
For some publishers who display referrals for non-Google products, the earnings you receive for the ad may now be less than the maximum referral value displayed for that ad. This is because our system will initially place a restriction on referral earnings as we monitor click and conversion data to determine that the conversions generated are valid. Once this validation period ends, you’ll begin earning the maximum value of the conversions as displayed in your account.
That means that if you run an Adsense Referrals ad for say “airline tickets” and it’s tagged for $35 per successful conversion, you don’t get the full $35. Who knows much much you’ll end up getting — could be just $5. And we all know it’s much, much harder to get conversions than clicks.
They added that this validation period will be in place indefinitely. Now there’s the rub.
Does this mean AdSense is getting some fraud conversions? Probably so. Well, that could put a brake in Google’s push for the CPA model.
I have removed mine too. They are just consuming an otherwise profitable ad space.