Is it against adsense to use black hat SEO methods? If they catch you and your site is banned from google, are you banner from adsense aswell?
Yes, Adsense will ban you if you use blackhat methods that are against the webmaster guidelines, which is why most people who do blackhat SEO tend to make affiliate sites, since most affiliate programs could care less what you do, as long as its legal.
The more important question is, are you operating within the AS TOS & Guidelines. There is a distinction between blackhat efforts at improving your SERPS rankings vs your Adsense activities. One is an elective.. you do whatever you like to improve your rankings across multiple engines (blackhat or otherwise), its your site, and there are no legal or financial implications (well, within reason..) The other is a specific business agreement between you and Google (Adsense). So to answer your question, blackhat is fine, so long as it is in accord with your AS agreement be it TOS, Guidelines, Verbal, whatever. I might also add that the term blackhat is vague, and often used to describe an incredibly broad (and often completely legal) set of practices. In fact, blackhat principles often equate to common business sense. So you need to be clear what you mean by blackhat.. it all comes back to your agreement with G. Hope that helps
But for general users, black hat is not okay? Just wondering.. I've seen so many cloaked sites soley made for adsense.. Thanks for your response
Of course it depends who the publisher is as well. If you are the NY Times and cloaking then there will not be a problem with you using AdSense but it you are mister $2 per day blogger ... then of course it is a problem.