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@webhostinghub.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@2ndQuadrant.com   Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com