Background Though the survival benefit of primary tumor operation for patients with signet ring cell carcinoma of the stomach is known, the specific characteristics of those patients who would profit from the operation are yet to be determined. To this end, a predictive model was developed to identify the conjecture that the survival profit from primary tumor operation would only be obtained by patients. Method The clinical data of the patients with signet ring cell carcinoma of the stomach were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, and then divided into operation and no-operation groups based on whether the patients underwent the primary tumor operation. To remove the confounding factors, propensity score matching was employed, and it was hypothesized that the patients who had been operated on and lived a longer life than the median cancer-specific survival time of those who hadn’t must have profited from the surgery. To discuss the independent factors of cancer-specific survival time in the beneficial group and the non-beneficial group, the Cox model was used, and based on the various vital predictive factors, a nomogram was drawn using logistic regression. Result The number of eligible patients was 12,484, with 43.9% (5483) of them having received surgery. After employing propensity score matching, the cancer-specific survival time of the operation group was found to be apparently longer (median: 21 vs. 5 months; p < 0.001) than the no-operation group. In the operation group, 4757 (86.7%) of the patients lived longer than five months (beneficial group). The six indexes (beneficial and non-beneficial group) included gender, age, Tumor Node Metastasis stage, histologic type, differentiation grade, and tumor position, and were used as predictors to draw the nomogram. The nomogram was used to divide the patients who had taken operations into two groups: the beneficial operation group and the non-beneficial operation group. The beneficial operation group, it was found, survived longer than the non-beneficial operation group (median cancer-specific survival time: 28 vs. 3 months, p < 0.001). Moreover, there was we could tell little difference in survival between the two groups (median cancer-specific survival time: 3 vs. 5 months). Conclusions The predictive model created to select suitable candidates for surgical treatment from patients with signet ring carcinoma of the stomach could be adopted to identify certain patients benefiting from the primary tumor operation.