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I hope to have a longer post at a later date, but I’ve taken a quick look at Google’s new Referrals product. It’s a bit different than what I think of affiliate or referral programs. Most programs allow you to include a code in a link that tracks the person as coming from you in order to give you credit for referring them to a product or service. Google does the same thing, but doesn’t allow you to use any link. It appears that you have to use one of their ad products in order to use referrals. So, basically instead of having a sidebar ad that’s 300×300 and rotates, you would have a referral ad instead.

And it appears that you can’t really limit the types of ads that are shown. I was interested initially because I thought that I could target more specifically, but you can only limit based upon category or keyword. So, if I chose the personal finance keyword I would get any ads that fall into the personal finance category, including ads for debt consolidation and IRS settlement agencies whom I believe generally rip people off. Of course, I can’t limit my current ads very well either, but if I stay away from posting too much about these types of businesses, I shouldn’t see many ads for them.

I’m not sure how much I’ll use the product, but it’s something that I’ll probably look at when I look into referral advertisements.