Thanks again Ryan. Thomasnet does well in the serps, but they do so on the backs of those that pay to be in their directory. That being said, I fully understand your explanation and appreciate your clarification for me.

Hey Ryan, thanks for the reply. They do offer free listings on their site, but not free links. Perhaps I was a bit fuzzy on my question. Thomas does very well on many keywords from their listings. The majority of thomasnet's content are the listings of companies that pay to be on the thomasnet website. Thomasnet has a rather high domain authority of 77. If thomasnet content consists mainly of paid listings with paid links and my understanding is that these are not good for SEO, why would thomasnet perform well?

Yes, I do understand how linking works.  My questions is about the links on their directory which are paid links.  Any company in their directory with a link to their website is a paid link. Shouldn't paid links be valued lower than non-paid organic links?

With all of the updates/changes to Google's algo, I assumed that paid listings & links like those on thomasnet.com would have less merit.  Is this an incorrect assumption?