It's just what it says, harvesting URL's. You can harvest millions of active URL's with softwares and group them by category.
There are a few uses from finding new sites in a niche, to finding sites you can advertise to or on.
I've got a list from a month or so ago of about a million active sites by category. I've found some real gems from mostly unknown but still decent traffic classified and auction sites. Plus I've been able to buy advertising to some sites customer lists for a few bucks that resulted in some great profit.