HughMungus - 7:10 pm on Mar 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

(b) Scraper sites have NO inherent "trust", and in fact (may) deteriorate the incoming visitor's appreciation for the content on the target site when clicking away from the scraper site, simply because the intervention of the scraper site in the "sales" process has jarred the momentum. Combined with the fact that scraper sites do NOT offer the product or support of the concern that operates the site(s) from which the content was scraped, the result is a depreciation in the visitor's perception of the value of the content, which carries over into the "sales" process and the trust relationship formed between that visitor and the REAL site from which the content was scraped, devaluing the original site's content and decreasing the likelihood that a sale will be completed.

Do you have any research to back-up your assertion that scraper sites devalue the site to which people are arriving via Adsense? I don't see how that would work. Yesterday I was looking for information on a certain type of concrete anchor screw. The (organic) search results were terrible in their ability to provide me with information about this particular type of bolt but I immediately saw an Adsense ad that had exactly the information I wanted so I clicked on it. So do Google's bad results mean that I think the website I went to next is also bad? No. In fact, the website I went to was BETTER than where I came from.

p.s. You never addressed my example of how search results DO devalue original content.