  We provide the theoretical framework to understand the phenomenology and
statistics of single-molecule (SM) signals arising in Surface-Enhanced Raman
Scattering (SERS) under the presence of so-called electromagnetic hot-spots
(HS's). We show that most characteristics of the SM-SERS phenomenon can be
tracked down to the presence of tail-like (power law) distribution of
enhancements and we propose a specific model for it. We analyze, in the light
of this, the phenomenology of SM-SERS and show how the different experimental
manifestations of the effect reported in the literature can be analyzed and
understood under a unified ``universal'' framework with a minimum set of
parameters.
