Earlier this week Australian and New Zealand publishers who use the Google AdSense service were in for a bit of a shock when they received their payments for amounts owing to them for November's advertising. They would have been unpleasantly surprised to find that the amount they received was not as much as they had been expecting.

Their initial frustrations then changed to relief as they found out that they were right to have been expecting a slightly greater amount deposited in their bank account. AdSense had made a rather absurd blunder.

It has been revealed that AdSense managed to invert the currency between the Australian and New Zealand Dollar with that of the United States Dollar. This therefore resulted in the US Dollar being weaker than the aforementioned currencies, with the publishers receiving less than they should have. 

At first it was expected that all publishers outside of the United States would be affected but upon further investigation, the mistake only concerns Australians and New Zealanders who use this Google service.

AdSense have acknowledged their error and have assured their customers that all the finances will be corrected within the week. They have released the following statement to all all the subscribers in Australia and New Zealand who were affected by the error:

"Happy New Year! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season.

It appears that the November payment you recently received was calculated using an inverted exchange rate. We’d like to let you know that you’ll be receiving an additional payment using the correct exchange rate to make up the difference. This payment will be issued to your bank account this week and we expect that you’ll receive it by Monday, January 7, 2008 if not sooner."

This error doesn't do Google's already diminishing reputation any good. Recently Google has been at the wrong end of the stick from many bloggers and journalists. So when they go and make an error such as this which directly affects many of these same bloggers, you can bet that it's not going to go unnoticed or untargeted.

This could be a very interesting year for Google. With expectations of a reputation crisis starting to do the rounds in many blogging circles, their saving grace is to ensure that their services are functioning perfectly.