So, what was the trouble I mentioned yesterday, which made Google warn me by email?
Apparently, there are some programs for generating traffic and/or clicks artificially, which Google doesn’t like, of course.
This appears to be related to referer spam, which sends a lot of hits with fake referers (such as casino sites), because many people and sites have public statistics, which may mean improved PageRank for the spammer’s site. If they spam thousands of sites this way… it can really make a huge difference.
This new case, however, doesn’t appear to be “true” referer spam, but traffic exchangers or autosurf programs.
For instance, last month the top referers for this blog were:
That’s an image, of course. I would never link to such sites. 
Note, by the way, how close the numbers are… can you say “automated”?
I have just blocked those, and others (go here for some tips on doing so with Apache).
It’s quite likely that blog exchangers are considered “bad”, too. And if Google is cracking down on such services, it may be a good time to stop using them (and to edit that part of the series). Most poeople really use them just to surf for credits, though I have been lucky to discover a couple of very interesting blogs, which I read to this day, there.
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Banner exchange is way better than traffic exchange. Google does not allow “traffic exchanges” but “banner exchanges” are okay. Take a look at FreeBannerExchange.ORG