Google is making some big news today as they have announced that they will be retiring their AdSense referrals program at the end of August and will be substituting it for the Doubleclick Performics Affiliate Network. The Google Affiliate Network works in a similar fashion to the AdSense Referrals program in that, it enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser defined actions, instead of clicks or impressions. Also, if you have less than three AdSense content units on a page, you can replace the referral ad units with the standard AdSense for content ad units.

Since the current program will be retiring at the end of August, Google is recommending you take the following steps:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.

• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.

What does this news mean to you? How have the regular AdSense referral blocks performed on your blog?