Will this idea help or hurt my rankings...?

[bigheadeddog]

I have a site that is used for lead generation. The site provides information for three products.
The site content is under heavy regulatory and legal control so making changes is not a simple task.

Would it help or hurt to use the exact content from each product description page and build blogs with that content. The blogs would have the comments option turned off and the blogs themselves only be updated when the main site changes (which is not that often).
Example of my current site (simplified view, there is more content than this):
www.mysite.com/PRODUCT1
www.mysite.com/PRODUCT2
www.mysite.com/PRODUCT3

Build Blogger (and Word Press, Type Pad Etc.) accounts:
PRODUCT1.blogspot.com
PRODUCT2.blogspot.com
PRODUCT3.blogspot.com

The thought is that this would be an easy way to create links back to the main site and still provide useful information in the blogs.

So will this plan help or hurt my site visibility – which is extremely low to begin with.

[beu]

Duplicate content could hurt your rankings and most blogs use nofollow tags for links as a default.

I would focus on building unique content of value to users instead but, that is just me!

Does anyone else have a different opinion?

[bigheadeddog]

I didn't think about the nofollow tags. Also agree that fresh content would be great, it's just not easily done in my marketplace. Even though the content for the blogs would be the same as on the main site, the blogs would have an entirely different URL and would be indexed separately from the main site. That's the part I am unsure of - how observant are the search engines in comparing content from two different sources?

[beu]

how observant are the search engines in comparing content from two different sources?

Pretty good, that is why I mentioned duplicate content as being an issue. (same content different URLs = duplicate content) :)

[glengara]

You've basically described creating a domain network which is also a risky proposition...

[BasicECommerce]

If I were you, I'd create the blogs but post unique information. I understand that your hands are somewhat tied. But, the point of a blog is to get out of those types of hand-cuffs and provide unique opinions/news.
This avoids duplicate content and may also be your loophole to 'free speech' and unique content.