A lot of links from sites I would call spam, but why

[zeus]

I have noticed on some sites I see a lot of links from weird domains, special from .ru sites, but I have no idea why they would link to my sites which have nothing to do with there category.
Also Im not that scared that google will punish me here be cause as they say other sites can not hurt your right ;)

The question is why are they linking to me

[goodroi]

In the last few years spammy sites were linking back to quality sites since the spammy sites stole content (or scraped the serps) and just kept the links that were in the content.

More likely it is because of the SEO theory that linking to quality trusted sites will provide a ranking boost. I am not saying this is a correct theory or incorrect. Of course these sites could be linking to you for another reason.

[g1smd]

I've noticed several sets of spammers that are posting spam to a site and then building links to that spam from other sites where they have posted other spam. They build a network of junk, only some of which actually points at the real intended target.

[zeus]

hmm g1smd there could be something about that, I do delete spam comments every other day.

[pageoneresults]

The question is why are they linking to me.

Maybe they are trying to distort your inbound link profile?

[lucy24]

Are they real links? That is, if you go there do you you find an actual, visible link to your site? I always assume they're forged referers with no existence outside my logs. Or some kind of ships-in-the-night transitory pseudo-link-oid that survives just long enough to show up in g###'s index before disappearing again. (I investigate a lot of pointless junk, but draw the line at these.)

[Simsi]

More likely it is because of the SEO theory that linking to quality trusted sites will provide a ranking boost

That's where my money is. Do they use anchor text that, when searched, returns your site in a Top position?

[g1smd]

Are they real links?

Yes. They are listed in Google WMT reports.

All those URLs return 410 to bots and most human visitors and 500 to anything with a referrer from the spam site.