This is a technique that can do two things: 1) Provide valid and useful content to site visitors (it just so happens that it’s done in a way to where it’s spread across multiple sites) and 2) Prop-up one main website, so that it ranks well.

IS the sole benefit (ultimately) to cause the search engines to see one site as being more valuable? Yes indeed. Unashamedly so. Now, if you don’t want to use your resources as best you can to rank as best as you can - or if it’s not something of much importance either way to you - fine. No big deal. But please don’t call something spammy unless it is, indeed, actually spammy. Plenty of (big) sites you probably use on a regular basis use this technique, a similar technique, or a “mutation” of this technique. (Gawker, et al come to my mind - they do it. And people seem to like using their sites just fine.)

As far as being a good way of being permanently banned (or even temporarily banned!) from the search engines - I have to tell you plain and simple that you’re definitely incorrect…unless the sites are actually spam sites.

The technique is not something that will get one banned. The content of the sites surely is. Scraper sites don’t get deindexed because they’re part of a mininet/blog farm/link farm/whatever-you- wanna-call-it…they get deindexed because they’re damned scraper sites…

Look - I appreciate you commenting on the post, but I just can’t allow everything I said to be discounted because of simple “feelings” or opinions based on the fact that spammers abuse this model of building websites.

This is poor advice. What you describe is quite specifically a spam technique — whether or not what you’re selling is legitimate.

Why is it “spam”? Because the sole purpose of all these extra sites is to game the search engines. You are trying to artificially inflate your rankings,

This is a good way to get permanently banned from the major search engines.