AdSense Referral says goodbye to publishers outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan.

You will find it hard to believe but, it is true! Google is removing AdSense referrals for users outside of North America, Latin America, and Japan. Google found out that AdSense referrals in these regions does not perform very well. In a written statement google stated:

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.

Soon, you’ll no longer see the option to create a referral button for AdSense in your account, although existing buttons will display as normal. This specific referral type will then be retired during the last week of January - any users who meet the conversion criteria (reaching $100 in earnings within 180 days of sign-up and removing all payment holds) before the change will generate earnings of $250 for the referring publishers. Any conversions which occur after this change is made will not be recorded in your account. You may wish to begin replacing any existing referrals promoting AdSense with referrals for another product or an AdSense for content unit.

This may not be the best we have hoped for from Google to hear at the beginning of the New Year.