Google has ushered in another revenue cut for adsense publishers, this time by reducing the payout for referring users to Google Pack to a dollar, down from US$ 2 that it used to previously give out. Add to this, Google would also be reducing the referral payout for installations in China i.e. if a Chinese user installs Firefox with Google toolbar through your referral, you will be paid less than you would for users from another countries. This is on top of the recent removal of adsense referral for publishers outside of United States.

All this makes me wonder if every thing is ok with Google Adsense, after all quite a few publishers are suffering due to recent policy changes and some have even jumped the ship.

Take for instance Markus Frind, CEO of Plentyoffish.com, who is one of the largest individual payout receiver of Adsense and even his CTR has decreased by 60%!

I believe this is mainly thanks to the recent policy changes by Google. My adsense revenue from my other sites has taken a nose dive and despite almost doubling my traffic, I am barely earning as much as I was before this policy change.

Which in turn means that Google is earning less; after all it gets a cut out of our earnings by playing the role of a middle man. And I believe this is the reason why Google is reducing amount of money it pays out to publisher for referring people to its various referral programs.

Google might have also reduced our cut from the adsense ad revenue, but we will never know that, thanks to its policy of keeping its cut a closely guarded secret.

With Adsense accounting for over 40% of Google’s annual income, it could just mean trouble times ahead for Google and more hardship for those publishers who depend on it!