Google kills AdSense Referrals!

See, I told you so. Some of my predictions for 2008 are closely coming to reality. And, it’s not even halfway the month of January. Google’s Inside AdSense Blog has just announced that they will discontinue AdSense Referrals.

It’s practically everywhere. The only regions/country that have been spared by Google AdSense are North America, Latin America and Japan.

If you’re outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan, AdSense referrals will be retired.

For publishers not located in any of the three regions detailed above, we’ll soon be retiring referrals promoting AdSense. We’ve found that this referral product has not performed as well as we had hoped in these regions. Again, please keep in mind that you can still generate referrals for the other products listed under the ‘Referrals’ section of your AdSense Setup tab.

Likewise, for those remaining publishers that are still qualified, the Referral Rates have been considerably reduced back to it’s old crappy numbers. No more $5 for every new referrals earning $5 in 180 days. No more $2,000 bonus for 25 referrals earning $100 each in 180 days. The only referral bonus left is a $250 bonus for a referral that earns $100 in 180 days. Oh, wait, the $250 has been reduced down to $100 now.

Read their full explanation about these changes.

The changes affects all publishers based in the Philippines. Call it the whole of Asia as well, minus Japan. And Europe too. Middle East, the African Continent, the North Pole and the South Pole.

Why Japan is excluded in the retirement? My guess is that e-commerce is very well alive in that country. So is online advertising. And thus the referrals program could also be making waves.