Thomas Register and Google

[dhunter]

I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum.......

My understanding is that Google is interested in whether or not a site has high quality links pointing to it and that partly determines page positioning, of course along with keywords, title, etc.

The question is, how does Google view links from Thomas Register? Does it view them as high quality links due to the gigantic manufacturing directory structure and bump up a site that has links from it?

Or does Google view all links from Thomas as paid listings (which they are) and ignore them in terms of boosting a website's ranking?

[glengara]

*how does Google view links from Thomas Register?

There seems to be a few of them, which one have you in mind?

[dhunter]

I guess I was thinking in general terms. As part of our program in Thomas Register, we have been given weblinks in various categories. Those links point to our website.

So the Google spyder crawls the Thomas site and sees many different links to our website. What I'm trying to figure out is, does Google see these links as high quality links and therefore use that as a positive in determining our page position? Or do they see them as paid links and ignore them?

What if we weren't in Thomas? Would the absence of links to a major (paid) directory hurt our Google page position? Or does Google ignore links from Thomas and our page position wouldn't be affected?

[glengara]

*What I'm trying to figure out is, does Google see these links as high quality links and therefore use that as a positive in determining our page position?*

Assuming we're talking about Thomasnet.com, I stuck a random entry into G and couldn't believe the amount of links it had from TN, seems to be a very SEO "inspired" directory.

In fact with G showing - Results 161 - 169 of about 14,000,000 from www.thomasnet.com, Results 21 - 25 of about 14,500,000 for "www.thomasnet.com" G may think so too, I'd look up a random listing and check how it's ranking on the various SEs....

[AnthonyCea]

Thomas Register is a very well known industrial directory that the search engines killed, now they are working with the engines in an attempt to make a comeback.

I do think that their paid listings act as a great database for all the engines, so I would say the directory is worthwhile long term to be in since it is one of the oldest and most respected in the business!

Our company was a long time advertiser in Thomas, but as I mentioned people quit using the resource when Google became popular and the inquiries and the return on investment went down the tubes.

[dhunter]

If you search for "diamond grinding wheels" (without the quotes) on Google, we're 2 and 3. The ThomasNet link for the same phrase is number 7.

Part of why we're up there is due to many links pointing to our site from other sites, some of which come from ThomasNet. The question is: if we no longer have links from ThomasNet pointing to our site and everything else stays the same, would that fact alone drop us further down the page or even to page 2?

If Google thinks links from Thomas Register are high quality, then they may see that we no longer have them and therefore we should be dropped in ranking.

But if Google ignores them in terms of assigning us a page position, then it doesn't matter whether or not we're in TR.

[AnthonyCea]

A good marketer wants to be in every great resource, you have to decide if you want to take that chance and test, no one knows how much Google values a link in reality or if they give it great value and they are not telling!

Common sense would tell me that Thomas is a good link though because a lot of people pay money to be in those listings, to Google I think that is a good sign of value!

Maybe today they value a Yahoo or DMOZ link and next year they don't, we don't know, but common sense tells me that those are good resources.

I guess that you have to be selective and use Google PR as a guide as to where you want to be linked from!

[dhunter]

Thanks Anthony, that's kind of what I was thinking. Thomas Register pays Google over a million dollars a year in advertising, so even from that standpoint Google would probably consider links from them as being "valuable". As a company, it would be kind of hard to devalue links from an advertiser that spends that kind of money.

If there was a website that was highly regarded for top quality research and training content and they linked to our site, that link would actually be a much higher quality link than a link from a huge directory of manufacturers. But since that huge directory spends huge dollars, it's probably going to be granted "high value" status.

But as you said, Google isn't going to tell so we'll just take a good guess.

[AnthonyCea]

One of the hardest things for "so called SEO's" is always trying to do better and rank higher when they are doing fine already like you are.

Remember the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it :confused:

If you are doing great in the SERP's don't do anything crazy, you are where you wanted to be now!

[glengara]

* Thomas Register pays Google over a million dollars a year in advertising, so even from that standpoint Google would probably consider links from them as being "valuable". *

And I thought I was cynical... ;-)

[AnthonyCea]

A million dollars worth of links is valuable indeed :p

[glengara]

Still think those G results don't exactly indicate a trusted resource....

[AnthonyCea]

Thomas Register was the Industrial search King at one time, they are a very old company, their links are solid gold man! :o

[dhunter]

You'll have to give them credit for reinventing themselves. They could have been completely wiped out by Google and Yahoo. I'm still not sure how relevant they are though.

A Google search usually takes you directly to what you are looking for once you click on a link. But if you click on a thomasnet link in your search results, you're presented with another long list of possibilities to wade through.

Their "spin" would be that they're giving you targeted choices. My comment would be that the Google search gave me that plus they're adding another click layer to the search. In addition, the top choices on their pages of lists aren't necessarily the best ones. They're just the ones that spent the most money with TR.

With TR, page relevance has nothing to do with it. It's purely dollar driven. You decide how high you want to rank and they tell you how much you have to pay for that position. Of course, as an advertiser you wouldn't spend top dollars to get prime positioning without some confidence that you'll meet the search expectation.

A company that is an excellent source for what you're looking for could be toward the bottom of the list on the last page if they don't have the "prime position" dollars to spend. But if they do a good job on their website, they could be at the top of the Google search.

If you want to do massive research, and chase down every possibility TR is a good venue for that. They even have a sidebar that gives you related categories so you can happily click away for hours. But for quickly finding what you want, I'll take pure Google every time.

So far, TR is too big to ignore. Maybe they'll stay viable, maybe they won't.

[glengara]

So, are you going to renew your subscription? ;-)

[dhunter]

Maybe, we'll see. As Anthony said earlier, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

[AnthonyCea]

I dumped paid ads with Thomas years ago, it was not producing ROI for us for the money paid out.

Yellow page ads are a similar risk, many directories are way too expensive for the return you get, so you have to judge based on sales produced, this means you have to track each inquiry, keep a history of each account, determine if you are garnering repeat customers from whatever source you pay for ads on.

Industrynet.com is an old B2B industrial portal, the domain was acquired by MNI, a very old industrial directory house recently, like Thomas Register, they charge big money for directory exposure, but many times when you search on a company in Google their listings of that company pop up.