I happened to look at my Adsense and I realized that it was still accumulating money, but in Singapore Dollars. That’s not going to work out too well for me since I’m no longer in Singapore, so I decided to change the address and country. Unfortunately, due to laws in Singapore and some other Asian countries, it’s not possible to change the country. Here’s the email reply I got from Google when I tried to request a country change on my Adsense account:
Hello,
We have received your request to update the country of your AdSense
account.For tax and security reasons, we are unable to change the country or
territory field of an existing payment address. Therefore, if you would
like to change your country/territory field, you’ll need to close your
current AdSense account and then submit a new application with your
updated mailing address.Prior to closing your account, please be aware that the account settings
and reports associated with your original account cannot be transferred to
your new account. This means that you’ll need to update your webpages with
the ad code generated by your new account and duplicate any existing
channel settings.Additionally, you must also be able to receive a Personal Identification
Number (PIN) via standard mail at the new address that you submit.
To close your existing AdSense account, please visit our Help Center at
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=request_cancellation
. Once you receive confirmation on your closed account, please submit a
new application at http://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1 , making
sure to use an email address other than the one associated with your
closed account.We’ll review your application and provide you with a response within 2-7
days.We appreciate your patience and cooperation.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
And here’s an excerpt of the Google FAQ page that covers this subject:
However, there are two situations in which you won’t be able to change your country directly within your account:
- The reporting currency in your account isn’t available as a reporting currency in your new country. View a list of countries and their reporting currencies.
- You’re located in or changing your country to one of the following:
China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, or SingaporeDue to system and legal constraints, we are unable to change your country if you’re located in or need to change to an address in one of these countries.
In either of these cases, we’ll work with you to close your existing account and open a new account using your desired address. Please contact us to begin this process.
Thanks guys. That’s all very helpful, but doesn’t change the fact that it turns something that should be simple into a complicated mess.
As you can see, I have no choice but to create a new Adsense account, using a US address, which is what I should have done to start with. Of course, I had no idea when I started using Adsense how long I’d be in Singapore. This whole thing with bouncing from country to country is a real pain. My Google Apps account is listed as being a Singapore account as well, and I can’t find any way to change that either, even though I’ll likely never see Singapore again.
Part of updating my Adsense is updating Adsense for feeds. Since I had to create a new Adsense account under a new Google account, I also have to create a new Feed in Feedburner so I can have the Google Adsense show up in there under the right account. That means I’ll have to cancel the old feed and start the new one up.
So, long story short, when you read this post in your RSS feed reader, please click through. The following post will have the updated feed address included in the body.
Thanks for your patience while I get my digital life aligned with my physical location.
Bradley Farless 