Is it illegal to fake traffic with bots? Not web rank, just how many people are online. Just wondering....
It is not illegal to fake traffic to your site, but google may not like you if you inflate your stats... although, I can not be certain what good will or will not do. If you do anything to trick google into thinking you have more then what you have, then what you think google will do? Is that the risk you want to take?
Depends how you do it. Are you just modifying your, say, forum software's "X users are online" portion? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's just a bit of a desperate move
If you are expecting people to take action because of it then there is a potential issue but depending on what the action is dictates the level of the issue. If you have a forum which requires paid subscription to see it and you claim there are 500 users are online now when actually there are none then, if they could prove that the figure was wrong (on the balance of probability) then they would have a reasonable case for action (to recover their subscription fee). If its a free forum then damages would be next to nothing for tricking them into giving over personal details. Obviously if its someone who bought the forum itself you tricked then your getting into bigger dollar territory
If the site gets no traffic anyway, what would be the point? To fool people into thinking its popular and thus they need to join?
Truly, this is not illegal but please think that it doesn't help anything for your site. Real visitor makes $... You gain nothing from Virtual visitor.