How Does a Spammer Benefit from Referrer Spoofing?

[JonathanGoodman]

A recent review of all client and personal websites showed a strange correlation. Traffic was coming in from Pelotas Brazil. The real clue was that some of my personal sites shouldn't see any traffic at all. So when I started getting traffic from Brazil I did some further research. It turns out Google is well aware of these events as seen in this forum post.

Referral spam - one week online and www.web.com is using my google site

Further reading lead me to this article:

Stop Google Analytics Referrer Spam

My question is: Why? Since the articles state referrer spam doesn't negatively affect search engine ranking then why bother in the first place? How is this spammer gaining anything by doing this?

After reading both the Google Support Forum and the related article I'm still scratching my head trying to understand the method for this madness.

[OrionGroup]

"Referral Spam" Can be seen in your web stats program, like Google Analytics. When webmasters or site owners log in to view their stats, they see a referral from a website (usually a shortened URL). The person then follows that link and the spammer gets more eyeballs to their site.

If the spammer is a service provider, their client might be paying per 1000 visitors (performance-based pay scale). So, getting x number of views to the site might mean they get paid a certain $ amount.

The other thing the spammer might get is ... tricking someone into buying their product or service.

Scott O.