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Slow and Steady is always a good sign. However spikes every once in a while should not be an issue at all. Let's say something from your website goes viral and you get tons of likes and other social activity related to your website for like 3 days and then it dies down. That's the nature of social media. Don't worry about it

You seem to have a clear understanding of the situation. You are making the conscious choice to continue with your current business practices. It makes sense. You have a monetary incentive to capture as much traffic as possible due to advertising revenue. As EGOL suggested, I believe the best paying advertisers will recognize your traffic as low quality and either choose not to advertise on your site or pay substantially less then they would for a similar ad on a better site. You also run the risk of losing many users. Humans don't like spam sites and will leave them for better sites. Additionally Panda changes will surely make it harder for your site to rank on it's legitimate content. Feel free to disregard this advice. I predict at some point in the not-to-distant future you will lose your advertisers or your traffic. The amount of effort you spend trying to get either back will ensure you never travel down this path again.

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