SMB Tool Update: Microsoft retiring Submit It!

Monday, April 2, 2007
Posted by Brawlin Melgar
Microsoft retiring Submit It!
On May 18th 2007 Microsoft will retire its Submit It! service. The service's site preparation, directory submittal, and reporting tools will be decommissioned. To help you transition away from the service, we are giving you a limited period of free access to Submit It!'s site preparation, submittal, and reporting tools. In addition, existing Submit It! customers are being offered a way to retain their Small Business Directory listings, for free, through 2008. Please read below for more detail and when you can expect to see changes.

Directory submittal, site preparation and reporting tools ending
Effective 3:00pm Pacific Daylight Time on May 18th 2007, you will no longer be able to log into and access the Submit It! service. The service's site preparation and optimization tools, directory submittal, and reporting services will be decommissioned and any data associated with these service components will be permanently deleted from Microsoft servers. If you want to preserve any reporting information please log into the Member Center to do so before the service end date. Additional instructions can be found in our Submit It! Customer FAQ.

Continued listing on the Microsoft Small Business Directory
Also effective May 18th 2007 at 3:00pm Pacific Daylight Time, the bCentral™ Small Business Directory will be retired. In its place, we are offering existing Submit It! customers and others who currently have bCentral Small Business Directory listings a free, grandfathered listing in the new Microsoft Small Business Directory. While we will be preserving the present directory's link friendliness and search ranking value, slight changes will be made in the way the directory appears to the public and how you may alter your listing. Please read below and see more details about these changes in our Small Business Directory Customer FAQ.

Automatically reserving your Microsoft Small Business Directory Listing
On May 18th 2007 when the Submit It! service ends, the bCentral Small Business Directory will be converted to a read-only online business directory. This means that while the public will still be able to browse, search and view directory contents, you will not have access to the listings in order to edit your information. Other than requests by you to remove your listing, after May 18th 2007 changes may not be made to the directory's contents.

The process of converting the bCentral Small Business Directory to the Microsoft Small Business directory will happen some time between May 18th and June 30th 2007. During the conversion there should not be any impact to your listed sites. The current directory will remain viewable to visitors until the new directory is in place. As was the case with bCentral Small Business Directory, you will continue to be bound by Microsoft's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy if you use the new, free Microsoft Small Business Directory service.

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