I blogged about this yesterday and thought it might be a good topic for a friendly debate here. If you do decide to partake please remain civil. the blog post is the one next to my name if you wish to comment over there. I’ve heard this stated numerous times throughout the years and it puzzles me. I don’t recall ANY search engine EVER requiring a webmaster to agree to a Terms of Service before, during, or after inclusion in their index. Google Adsense has a TOS that one must agree too as does Yahoo Publisher, and most other affiliate or PPC companies. Even then there is nothing mentioned about Black Hat methods. There are rules against click fraud and the like, but most black hats don’t condone that activity anyway (I certainly do not). Now search engines do have “webmaster guidelinesâ€, so lets have a look at those here: Google Webmaster Guidelines. First we must define a guideline: Text that provides instructions and advice for performing a task and suggests possible approaches. Any definition for guideline will use terminology like “suggested†or “adviceâ€. These aren’t set rules they are simply suggested advice. Google is simply saying that they reserve the right to remove you from the index IF they find you doing things they don’t agree with. If we all followed the “guidelines†to a T we would likely all be removed from the index by now. One of their guidelines states “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank.†How many webmasters do you see on forums asking for links or buying and selling links? Everyone is trying to gain a competitive edge to outrank the competition and while the search engines may have “guidelines†against it, there is nothing going on that is against the “terms of serviceâ€. The truth of the matter is that the search engines eat up Black Hat methods for getting a site indexed and ranked. They place “guidelines†against it because they know that they have no technology in place to prevent it.