New AdSense Program Policies: Referrals and Supported Languages

Well, Jenstar — perhaps the most famous AdSense consultant — has the full scoop on changes to the AdSense Program Policies that every AdSense publisher should read. If you recall, the Program Policies form part of the Terms and Conditions you agreed to when you joined the AdSense program in the first place. (The Terms and Conditions have also been updated in minor ways.)

The two things that interest me most are the introduction of referrals and a change in the language policy.

Referrals

We don't have the details on referrals yet, but we always knew it was a matter of time before some kind of referral program was introduced. After all, Google has had an “Invite a Friend” link at the top of the AdSense console for a long time. I even discussed this in my book:

“What that 'Invite a Friend' link at the top of the console?” he asked.

“It's for referring AdSense to your friends,” I answered. “If you know anyone who has a Web site, you ask Google to send them an invitation to join the program.

“Do you get paid if they do?” Stef asked. “Friends of mine are always trying to get me to join things because they'll make some money if I do.”

“While a lot of commercial Web sites have referral and affiliate programs that pay money, so far Google doesn't,” I said. “But who knows? That might change in the future.

So despite the cynics who might say this is a response to the thread posed by Chitika's eMiniMalls program, Google has obviously planned something along these lines for a long time now. What we don't have are the details of the program yet, those have not been announced, so stay tuned here for more.

Language

Although AdSense has long had a list of officially supported languages, publishers have until now been allowed to place ads on pages that were primarily written in a non-supported language. Publishers would then hope that appropriate ads would still be served, primarily by advertisers who are targeting all languages.

The Program Policies now forbid this: you must only use AdSense with officially-supported languages. The list of supported languages is small, so this one will undoubtedly annoy some publishers. As usual, though, you may be able to get an exception to the policy for your site if you have a good reason. You'd need to mail adsense-support@google.com to get an official reprieve.

Next Time

Well, back to our AdSense case study in the next posting, unless some more interesting news breaks. I find it amusing, by the way, that the case study for my Invisible Fence Guide now ranks #3 on Google for the term “adsense case study”. Some of Google's own official case studies are ranked below mine.

Eric Giguere is the author of Make Easy Money with Google, a real (printed!) introductory AdSense book for non-technical people, available at all fine bookstores. Be sure to download the free sample chapter for more information about the book.