I have just received an email announcing the retirement of the bCentral small business directory. In its place Microsoft is planning to launch the Microsoft Small Business Directory.

"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." 

This obscure directory had been around for years and I can only applaud Microsoft doing away with it. Other than SEO companies I don't even khow anyone who knows or heard about this directory. It rarely if ever shows up in search results even on MSN, so the only value it was serving is giving a cheap one-way links to those who were too lazy or skilled enough to find really good links with topical relevance. The whole Submit It Directory submittal, and site preparation and reporting tools are also getting the axe. Submission tools lived out their useful shelf life years ago, it's about time Microsoft gets the point as well. We have made our own SEO Studio submission tool free years ago in all editions of SEO Studio, it's a complete waste of time except for a few obscure international engines that are non-crawler based.