Re: Consent to translate your web page at http://wiki.postgresql.org/

On 5/16/13 5:46 AM, Maria Ramos wrote:
> My name is Maria Ramos and I'm seeking the approval to translate your
> page about porting from FileMaker Pro to PostgreSQL into Spanish language.
> Maria Ramos
> mariar(at)webhostinghub(dot)com
> http://webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/

Let me put a full debunking into the record since this isn't easy to
figure out. I had to see a few examples from "Maria" to notice the
pattern, so I can't blame anyone else who wasn't sure if this was legit
after seeing one. This is fairly subtle bit of SEO someone is doing on
the edge of some more legitimate business.

There is a "Education Channel" site at
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/edu that includes information about
open-source programs. And they will translate materials (I can't say to
what quality level) and publish things there. Here are two examples
listed as being translated by this Maria Ramos:

http://epe.si/about-epesi ->
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/acerca-de-epesi
http://www.bitrot.de/macswitch.html ->
http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/compra-un

And those examples suggest what is coming next. After the translation,
they ask for a link back from your site. From the invitations I've
gotten to translate things on my own sites--I've gotten two of these
now--it's clear to me that the targets of this "service" are pages with
good Google rankings. That sure looks like the standard link exchange
spam approach, except with this translation twist that preys on authors
of content. There's an article about that here:
http://dmitrybrant.com/2013/05/06/a-new-low-in-seo-scams

And sure enough, the site that one is talking about--"Web Hosting
Geeks"--is filled with links promoting WebHostingHub material. Some
other open source communities have gone through this same exercise and
also concluded this is a link exchange spam setup:
http://kde.6490.n7.nabble.com/Consent-to-translate-your-web-page-at-http-kopete-kde-org-td1526474.html

It doesn't help that I also found an article about Twitter spamming work
related to this company too:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/webhostinghub-com-spamming-like-its-going-out-of-style-a-case-study/4731

There might be a legitimate arm of Web Hosting Hub that interacts with
open-source projects. That doesn't seem to be end that is contacting
people about Spanish translations though.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com