• February 3, 2005

Google has begun offering businesses cash rewards for referring small-to-medium businesses to their AdWords and AdSense programs.

"The Google referral program (beta) is for businesses whose customers and visitors include small to medium-sized businesses, and who want to help those companies become more successful by running Google AdWords, or serving ads with Google AdSense," Google's Web site states. The search giant is offering $20 per referral, and will place referring ads on the sites of businesses that sign up.

Site owners sign up and send an application via Google's Web site, and then there is an approval process. Those owners are paid only if the traffic they send Google's way ends in a new AdWords or AdSense client--a referral is considered "complete" when an advertising client spends $20 on AdWords or a publishing client earns $75 in AdSense revenue.

--Shankar Gupta