Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Talk!

SEO redirection seems to be one of the most common question I get whenever I conduct a SEO training. So, to address them, I’ve decide to make a blog post about it and hopefully this will help you the next time you need to redirect a site while not screwing up your page rank.

Redirection is simple. Just remember to always! use 301 Redirection.

“301 Redirection is a “Moved Permanently” message that is sent to whoever is trying to access your old URL. All the search engine recognize this code and when their crawler encounters this message, they will understand that the page has moved to a new one and they will elegantly start accessing the new site”

So.. what do you get out of 301 redirects that is unique?

1. Your old page rank on (www.oldsite.com) will be transferred to (www.newsite.com) so you get to retain all your scores and “brownie points” from the search engine
2. Your www.newsite.com will retain the crawl frequency of www.oldsite.com which is very important especially if your www.oldsite.com is crawled very frequently and you want to have that for your www.newsite.com
3. Inbound links will still be credited to you

You should not use the following to perform redirection:

• Don’t use javascript or meda redirection to perform any redirection. When the crawler sees that, it will still think your site is www.oldsite.com and the only content inside is the few lines of code that you use to redirect
• Don’t create a “The site has moved…” page on your www.oldsite.com. If you really need to inform your visitors that your site has moved, put the page up on www.newsite.com instead. However, make sure the message is just part of the original content of www.newsite.com or else the crawler will think www.newsite.com is all about “The site has moved…” :-)

The folks from this link has a good resource on how to perform 301 redirects:

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

Hope all these helps!

Recently I tried to assist a team in setting up CNAME and SSL on their Windows Azure account and I will like to share with you the steps that's involved so you can do the same for your website.

Setting up is relatively easy and can be completed within 15 minutes.

To start, all Windows Azure project is assigned a URL such as <yourprojectname>.cloudapp.net. However, if you run your own website and wish to mask out this name with your public facing domain, you will have to create a CNAME entry in your DNS to map this.

In today’s example, we have a public facing URL called gallery.cloudfex.com that we wish to point to our sample SSL URL nimbusssl.cloudapp.net.

To set that up, you simple has to use the DNS Manager (for Windows 2008 Server) or your domain registrar like GoDaddy if they are hosting the DNS for you to add a CNAME record.

For DNS Manager:

Once you’ve set this up, you will realize that whenever you access gallery.cloudfex.com, it will be diverted to nimbusssl.cloudapp.net

Doing a DNS will show:

However, if you use your browser to navigate to gallery.cloudfex.com, although you’ve been diverted to nimbusssl.cloudapp.net, the URL on your browser doesn’t change at all thus your visitor will still be using your public facing URL.

Next, we will want to start implementing the SSL solution on our site. Firstly, let’s start the process of applying for a SSL certificate. There’s a lot of company out there that sells SSL certificate and you should pick and choose the ones that fit your need.

I’m using RapidSSL in our example as they are offering a 30-days free SSL certificate which you can apply for and get it within 10 minutes.

http://www.rapidssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/free-ssl/freessl.htm

The certificate that is issued by RapidSSL are true certificate that is in compliance with major internet browser. You’ll need to pay for this certificate after the 30-days trial but in our example, we will just use it first to test it out.

The process to get a certificate is pretty simple,

1. RapidSSL will ask you to submit a certificate request, you can do this by using IIS Manager in Windows 2008 to generate the certificate request file:

Once you’ve completed this wizard, a certificate request file will be generated. The content of the file will be similar to this:

2. RapidSSL will then do it’s due diligence to ensure that you are who you claim to be (the owner of the site). In RapidSSL case, they will allow you to proof your identify by reading and confirming an email sent to an “admin” type email address (e.g. the email you use to register your domain, etc). After which, they will end by calling your phone anywhere in the world to ask you to enter a 4 digit code so that they can tie a phone number to your request.

3. Once RapidSSL confirms you identity, they will generate your SSL certificate. The content of the certificate is similar to a long string of text that you see in the certificate request file.

4. With that content, you will create a <filename>.cer file on your server. Usually what I’ll do is to open up notepad and paste the content into it. Then I’ll save it as <filename>.cer

Now that you have the SSL certificate, it’s time for you to import it into Azure. If you notice in Azure certificate storage area, they only accept .pfx and not .cer. Thus, you’ll need to convert your .cer to .pfx using IIS again.

You’ll start off by installing the certificate in your test IIS server.

Once you’ve completed the installation, you will export the certificate out in .pfx format. The password section is to ensure that you’re the owner of the exported file and to prevent people from using it even if they manage to obtain the .pfx file.

Now that, we have the .pfx file, it’s time to import into Azure certificate store. To do so, simple log on to the web control of Windows Azure and under your Azure instances, you can find a Certificate Store area, click create certificate and you will be presented with this screen:

You can upload your PFX file and enter the password that you’ve used during the export process discussed above.

Once that’s done, you will see your certificates in the instance certificate store:

Next, you will need to add the certificate to your Windows Azure Webrole Project. This is necessary so that Azure will know which certificate to use when your visitor request it.

Firstly, double click  your Web Role project and this screen will appear:

Next, go to the signing section but before you can add your certificate, you will first need to install the certificate into your machine, to do so, simple double click on the .cer file of your certificate on your development machine:

Double click on the certificate (.cer) and then install certificate.

Make sure you install it into your “PERSONAL” store:

The process is very simple, next we proceed to associate your certificate with your web role project:

Make sure you select the one that you’ve imported. In our case, we will use the last certificate.

Once that’s done, you can now Publish this project onto the web and it should be SSL enabled!

Hope these help!

If you are student studying in a tertiary institution, and you like photography or digital imaging, please do sign up for this competition from Microsoft Singapore!

$4500 to be won in this competition, visit http://tinyurl.com/photo360 for more information!

Hi everyone!

For those who are watching TED will notice that Microsoft recently demonstrated it’s new mapping capabilities on Bing maps and received a standing ovation from the crowd!

You can watched the TED show at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera.html

During the demo, Blaise talked about how we’ve created a portal unit that can be carried indoors to take ground level imaging in an indoor environment. This is pretty cool considering the fact that most maps nowadays are either from street level (outdoor) or from the top (satellite).

Thanks to the team, I had a chance to meet up with the folks who created this backpack late last year and had completed a survey at pike place market in Seattle!

Now, for the better news! The portal unit has actually reached our Singapore shores about a month ago and we are finally going public about this.

In the upcoming weeks, we will be bringing this baby out to some of the places of interest in Singapore so if you manage to catch one of us carrying this, feel free to say Hi!

If you will like to suggest places which we should visit or have interesting ideas on how we can make use of it, drop me an email v-yishen(at)microsoft/d0tcom

http://www.usonyx.net/academic-hosting-student-plus.html

Bing won the “Best New Startup or Product of 2009” category at the TechCrunch Crunchie awards.  Thankfully Harry Shum was able to fly down to be on hand to accept.  This is a really great honor for Bing, and an amazing statement that the community voted us in. You can read the coverage and watch Harry Shum’s humorous acceptance speech.

Congrats to the team on building a truly amazing product!

I just receive notification that VS2010 and .NET 4 will be launch on April 12, 2010. There will be a public RC for both technologies in February.

Went though my email this morning and saw an article published by the official Google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

From the sound of it, it seems that they are seriously considering to either get any censorship lifted on Google’s service in China or they’ll move out for good. Pretty interesting considering the fact that China’s growth and scale has been rising over the past few years and Google seems to be willing to lose out a big piece of pie for the sake of total freedom of speech.

You can read more in the link above. I’ll be seeing how the Chinese government will react to their decision and their request.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Just Got Easy

Today, Microsoft announced a monthly spotlight series, beginning with the SEO Toolkit, an extension for IIS.

Start with the free download, review your website, and make changes fast. The SEO Toolkit with its detailed analysis and search engine friendly suggestions helps improve the relevance of your website in search results right away.

The SEO Toolkit will help you:

· Increase website traffic and revenue

· Influence and update search engines

· Improve customer experience

For more information or to download, please visit the Free SEO Toolkit page.

SEO Just Got Easy: Microsoft highlights the free SEO Toolkit to increase website traffic and revenue http://bit.ly/7haUxX

(Pictures/Content abstracted from: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/archive/2009/09/01/windows-phones-are-coming-on-october-6th.aspx)

Microsoft will be releasing a series of new phones with it’s partners on October 6th.

This week, in our regular FOW story we look at another of our key features that we’d like you to know more about, so you can make the best use of it.  Today take in depth look into Deep Links

What are Deep Links?

Deep Links are a list of popular links within a site,  that are displayed within the top result, usually our Best Match result, when we are confident that the user intends to navigate to the top site.  Customer research says the number one thing people are looking for in a search engine is the quickest way to find what they are looking for. Deep Links do exactly that and help simplify the user’s task by taking them one step closer to their final destination.

How does it work?

Using toolbar and IE data we determine the most popular actions taken on the homepage and provide quick links to those right on the SERP within the best match top link.  We’re currently serving Deep Links for 1.4M sites and the Deep Link feature is displayed for 30% of overall queries issued on the SERP.

A great example of Deep Links in action is the below query for Alaskan Airlines – right within the result, below the website summary description, you have quick access to flight status, check in and reservations.

Perhaps you are planning a visit to a national park this Labor Day weekend?  Using top Deep Links you can easily and quickly plan your trip, find directions and check up on fees and current conditions.

Looking to find the closest location of a retail store, or a specific department within it?  Using Deep Links you can quickly navigate to a retail store’s popular departments or store locator page without having to click through to the site home page.  What a time saver!

Popularity

Deep Links are one of the most popular features on the sites. They are the second most clicked feature after algo results.  The below pie shows a comparison of clicks each of the different site features received in the month of July (algo results not included). Some examples  of our most popular Deep Links include:-

· users click on Directions 18% of the time that we display Deep Links for MapQuest

· users click through to the Mail Deep Link 19% of the time for Yahoo

GIzmodo (http://gizmodo.com/5334331/zune-hd-prices-leaked-16gb-for-220-32gb-for-290) reported a leak in pricing for Zune HD. Apparently someone checked the inventory system and found the price in BestBuy.

Release date is September 8th.

This week, in our regular FOW story we take a deeper look into Bing Travel and a few of its key features that really differentiate Bing Travel. This feature is for US and Canadian departures only.

The Price Predictor

One of the more intelligent tools that makes Bing an effective decision engine is our Price Predictor.   The Price Predictor helps users answer the key question of when is the right time to book my airline tickets. Based on more than 175 billion (and counting!) airfare observations, using real pricing and availability information, the Price Predictor helps users decide to buy now or wait.

Let’s see how it works using a sample search (conducted on July 10). From the Bing Travel homepage, enter your cities and dates, and click “search flights.” On the next screen, you’ll see results with specific itineraries, and to the left, an arrow with our buying recommendation.

In this example, the Price Predictor for a flight from Los Angeles to Denver recommends that you buy the listed fare, with a 79% confidence rate that fares would rise $50 or more over the next seven days. (And we were right! The fare jumped $82 during that week.)  Click on the “details and fare history link” and you’ll see additional information that makes it easy for you to decide whether to buy now or wait:

· details about the price prediction and confidence rates

· the daily fare history for this itinerary

How do we get all of this data? Every day, Bing Travel gathers millions of potential trip itineraries from a variety of airfare information sources. We track more than 2,500 combinations of origin and destination cities — from U.S. and Canadian departures to destinations worldwide — for trips of up to 21 nights over as long as a 180-day period. We crunch all of this information in order to show you the airfare history and create our price predictions for a given market.  It may sound complicated, but it’s all aimed at making your travel search simple — so you can find the best deals and have confidence about when to buy your tickets. And, with the money you save, you will be able to start planning your next trip that much sooner!

The Hotel Rate Indicator

Unlike the Price Predictor, the Hotel Rate Indicator doesn’t project whether the cost of a room will go up or down on the dates you want to stay; instead, it compares the current rates to past rates for that hotel, helping you buy with confidence.  Let’s work through another example search for hotels in Las Vegas.

From Bing Travel, search hotels in Las Vegas for your dates. On the search results page, you can filter by the number of stars, amenities, brand or geographical location. Then, click “open map” to see a visual layout of the available hotels for your selections:

In the above example (the search was conducted on July 27), for hotels for Labor Day weekend the pinpoints are colored to indicate value for money:

· the green color indicates a “deal”

· the yellow color shows this hotels has an “average rate”

· the red color indicates the cost per night at this hotel is “not a deal”

Mouse over each property and you can see the specific prices and star ratings.  The Hotel Rate Indicator is also great for travelers with flexible dates. Click on the hotel listing to see the average rates for weekends before and after the dates you originally picked:

Here the Rate Indicator shows that you could actually stay at this property for about half the cost, by going the previous weekend. Mouse over the short green bar and you’ll see that the average rate is only $169. Now that’s a deal! Just be sure not to squander all your savings at the blackjack table.

Flexible search tools

Along with Bing Travel’s Price Predictor and Hotel Rate Indicator we also have flexible search tools that can save you money on flights when you haven’t decided exactly when or where you want to go.

First, let’s suppose you’re thinking about a trip to Hawaii in September, but haven’t yet settled on when to go. From the Bing Travel homepage, scroll down to the “plan trips” section, and select your departure and destination cities.  On the next screen, you’ll see a graph with the lowest fares over a 30-day range. Under “refine results” in the left column, you can change your dates or your trip length, and compare the fares to those that are available to additional airports:

In this example (the search was done on Aug. 3), we can tell that the lowest possible fares to Hawaii in September are for departures on Sept. 2, 12, 15, 20 or 26. And you can see that the lowest fares are for flights into Honolulu (the blue line), and that fares to Maui (the red line) are generally, but not always, lower than fares to Kona (the green line).  If you were to click on one of the circles, you’ll get details for that fare, as well as a link to search for specific flights. It’s that easy to find the lowest possible price to multiple destinations over a range of dates. 

Now let’s suppose that you’re truly flexible, not just on when you travel but also on where you go. Say you live in Kansas City, and have a budget of $200 for airfare. Where can you go? From Bing Travel’s flexible search page, go to the left column under “refine results” and select your departure city, a 30-day date range, your desired trip length and even a maximum price.  The map displays all of the cities to which there are fares that meet your criteria.

In the above example you could fly from Kansas City, round-trip to Denver for just $129, or all the way to Baltimore for just $168. Check out the arrow next to each fare, which indicates our price prediction over the next seven days, and then click the search link to find and book specific flights.

Until now, you may not have realized just how many places you can go when you don’t have a lot of money to spare. And even better, Bing Travel’s flexible search tools are a foolproof way to make sure you stay within your travel budget — whether you’re searching for sunshine in Hawaii or looking to escape the heartland for the coast.

Now you can IM from your browser directly with Windows Live Web Messenger (http://webim.sg.msn.com/)

No software installation required.. pretty cool. you can now chat with your friend at school, at work, in the library, or overseas!

Windows Azure:

• Compute = $0.12 / hour
• Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month
• Storage Transactions = $0.01 / 10K
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

SQL Azure:

• Web Edition – Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month
• Business Edition – Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

.Net Services:

• Messages = $0.15/100K message operations , including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens
• Bandwidth = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB

How Comsumption is Measured

Windows Azure

• Compute time, measured in machine hours: Windows Azure compute hours are charged only for when your application is deployed. When developing and testing your application, developers will want to remove the compute instances that are not being used to minimize compute hour billing.
• Storage, measured in GB: Storage is metered in units of average daily amount of data stored (in GB) over a monthly period. E.g. if a user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for a day, her monthly billed storage would be 1 GB. If the same user uploaded 30GB of data and stored it on Windows Azure for an entire billing period, her monthly billed storage would be 30GB. Storage is also metered in terms of storage transactions used to add, update, read and delete storage data. These are billed at a rate of $0.01 for 10,000 (10k) transaction requests
• Bandwidth requirements (transmissions to and from the Azure datacenter), measured in GB: Bandwidth is charged based on the total amount of data going in and out of the Azure services via the internet in a given 30-day period. Bandwidth within a datacenter is free.
• Transactions, measured as application requests

SQL Azure

Web Edition Relational Database includes:

• Up to 1 GB of T-SQL based relational database
• Self-managed DB, auto high availability and backup
• Auto Scale with pay-as-you grow
• Best suited for Web application, Departmental custom apps.

Business Edition DB includes:

• Up to 10 GB of T-SQL based relational database
• Self-managed DB, auto high availability and backup
• Auto Scale, Pay-as- you grow
• Additional features in the future like auto-partition, CLR, fanouts etc.
• Best suited for ISVs packaged LOB apps, Department custom apps

.NET Services:

Messages (Includes Access Control, Orchestration, and Reliable Queuing for message): .NET Services allow developers to easily connect their cloud applications and databases with existing software assets and users. This connection between cloud and on-premises assets is facilitated by the exchange of messages. The consumption-based pricing model means that customers will pay only for the number of message operations that their applications use. The definition of a “message operation” includes Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens. Messages are charged to the customer in discrete blocks of 100,000 (“100k”) for each monthly billing period, meaning that

• A customer who consumed 95,000 messages would be billed for 1x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
• A customer who uses 150,000 messages in a billing period would be charged for 2x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).
• A customer who uses 20 million messages in a billing period would be charged for 200x100k messages (plus the bandwidth used to send messages in or out).

You can read more about SLA and other information at http://www.microsoft.com/azure/pricing.mspx