When “Leads” Aren’t Really Leads: Poor Lead Quality on ThomasNet
A Closer Look at ThomasNet.com, Fraudulent Inquiries, and How to Protect Your Pipeline
When Lead Volume Is Down, and Spam Is Up
What do you do when a platform that used to be a steady source of RFQs suddenly sends fewer leads, and more of them are fake?
At Marketing Metrics Corp. (MMC), our industrial digital marketing agency, we’ve been watching ThomasNet’s performance closely for years. On our blog, we recently documented ThomasNet’s dramatic decline in U.S. desktop traffic.
The figures from SEMRush are shocking:
- From 1,152,221 daily users in January 2022
- To fewer than 112,000 daily users today
That’s an 88%+ drop in traffic, and not surprisingly, many industrial advertisers have seen a steep decline in lead quantity.
But here’s the part that’s often missed:
As traffic and volume fall, lead quality on ThomasNet is also deteriorating, and in some cases, it’s becoming actively dangerous.
In a recent 30-day audit for one MMC client who advertises on ThomasNet.com, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) showed 8 key events / RFQs from ThomasNet.com. On the surface, that looked encouraging.
But when we dug in…
7 out of 8 “leads” turned out to be fraudulent or spam. This is also occurring with our clients who have free listings on ThomasNet.com
Many of them used subtle domain tricks:
- insteel.com vs. insteels.com
- admiralsteel.com vs. admiralsteels.com
- worthingtonenterprises.com vs. worthingtonentreprises.com
These are not harmless typos. They are deliberate tactics designed to impersonate real companies and slip into your sales pipeline.
This whitepaper will break down:
- What’s really happening with ThomasNet leads
- How scammers exploit industrial directories
- How to identify and verify suspicious leads quickly
- What policies, tools, and playbooks you can put in place
- How to decide if ThomasNet still deserves a spot in your budget
From Traffic Decline to Lead Quality Crisis on ThomasNet
Are You Measuring Volume… or Value?
If you are still evaluating ThomasNet on raw lead count, you are only seeing half the story.
In our audit across Marketing Metrics Corp’s clients who still advertise on ThomasNet, we are seeing a pattern:
- Fewer overall ThomasNet leads
- A higher percentage of people trying to sell you on their services, low-intent, off-geography, or outright fraudulent inquiries
- Sales teams burning time on leads that never had a chance to close
So even if your ThomasNet “lead volume” looks stable on a monthly report, ask yourself:
- How many of those entries are real buying opportunities?
- How many are wasting your team’s time—or worse, exposing you to fraud?
A Real Example: 8 RFQs, Only 1 Real Prospect
That 30-day look at ThomasNet leads?
- 8 RFQs recorded in GA4
- 7 identified as fraudulent or spam after manual review
The red flags were subtle:
- Domains that were one letter off from legitimate Fortune 1000 manufacturers
- Display names that matched real companies, but email addresses that did not
- Requests that looked like genuine RFQs but came from recently registered, suspicious domains
When nearly 90% of “leads” from a channel are fraudulent, you don’t have a lead generation program; you have serious exposure to risk.
The New Face of Lead Fraud: What’s Actually Going On?
What Do You Call This Behavior?
Scammers use a mix of techniques that, on the surface, look like normal RFQs. Under the hood, they are classic impersonation attacks:
1. Email spoofing
Forging the “From” header so an email appears to come from a legitimate domain or person – even though the sender doesn’t control that domain.
2. Domain impersonation / typo-squatting
Registering domain names that look almost identical to real companies:
- Adding or dropping an “s”
- Swapping letters (worhtington vs. worthington)
- Using common misspellings
These domains are then used for:
- Lead forms
- RFQ submissions
- Phishing emails
- Fake purchasing inquiries
3. Display-name impersonation
Using a real company or real person’s name in the “From” field, while the actual email address is unrelated or malicious.
All three tactics share one goal:
Increase perceived legitimacy just enough so your team engages.
Once your team responds, the scammers have what they want: a validated business email, a live contact, and insight into your internal process.
Why It Matters
Beyond being annoying, fraudulent leads have very real business consequences:
Wasted time and resources
Sales and support teams chase “opportunities” that never close. Your CRM fills up with junk.
Distorted performance metrics
Fake leads inflate your lead counts and make ThomasNet (or any channel) look more effective than it is. CPL and ROI calculations get fuzzy.
Security and financial risk
These leads can be the first step in phishing, invoice fraud, or malware. Scammers want pricing, org charts, contact names, and anything they can weaponize.
Reputational damage
When scammers impersonate your company or your customers, they can create bad experiences in your name. One of MMC’s clients who is a ThomasNet advertiser, experienced exactly this: fraudsters used look-alike domains to pose as their business, causing confusion and reputational exposure with suppliers and partners.
Key takeaway
You are not “just dealing with spam.” You are dealing with organized attempts to manipulate your systems, your data, and your people.
Why Scammers Love ThomasNet and Industrial Directories
Why Use a Directory at All?
If you were a scammer targeting manufacturers, where would you go?
You would look for a place where:
- Companies voluntarily list products, services, capabilities, contact names and titles along with locations
- Lead forms already exist and are expected to generate inquiries
- Messages arrive with a halo of legitimacy (“It came from ThomasNet, so it must be legit, right?”)
That’s exactly what platforms like ThomasNet provide.
What Scammers Actually Gain from “Fake RFQs”
Fraudulent lead submissions aren’t random. They are strategic. Here’s what scammers typically get from them:
1. Foot in the Door for Phishing and Social Engineering
The first lead submission is just an opener.
Once your team replies, scammers gain:
- A verified corporate email address
- A human contact inside your company
- Knowledge of who handles purchasing, quoting, or finance
They can now escalate to:
- Fake invoice scams
- Wire transfer fraud
- Credential harvesting attempts
2. Product, Specs, and Pricing Intelligence
Some fake RFQs are attempts to:
- Gather confidential pricing
- Understand your quoting and approval process
- Map out your product lines and capabilities
With that information, scammers can:
- Imitate real buyers more convincingly
- Generate fraudulent purchase orders
- Resell your pricing data or use it in competitive schemes
3. Reconnaissance on Your Internal Workflows
Every interaction teaches them something:
- How fast you respond
- Who responds first (sales, inside sales, customer service)
- How formal or informal your process is
They can then craft more convincing:
- Fake RFQs and POs
- Fake shipping arrangements
- Vendor or customer impersonation attempts
4. Testing Your Defenses
Sometimes, the first wave of fake leads is just testing:
- Do you notice domain misspellings?
- Do your filters flag suspicious email formats?
- Do you always respond, no questions asked?
If you reply, they have learned that your process is open to exploitation.
5. Data Harvesting and Malware Delivery
If your team opens attachments or clicks links in “RFQ attached” emails:
- Passwords and credentials may be stolen
- Malware or ransomware can be installed
- Your contact database can be exfiltrated and sold
6. Setting Up Fake Purchase Cycles
In the B2B world, a common scam pattern is:
- Request a quote
- Place a “rush” or “urgent” order
- Ship to an unverified address
- Pay with a stolen credit card or fraudulent PO
- The scammers profit by reselling the stolen goods, while you eat the loss.
7. Simple Spam and List Building
Not every actor is sophisticated. Some just:
- Harvest active email addresses
- Add you to spam or scam lists
- Sell your contact info to other fraudsters
The Scraping Problem: How ThomasNet Feeds the Funnel
To make things easier, scammers don’t need to click around manually. Data scraping tools can pull down:
- Supplier names
- Locations
- Categories and capabilities
- Sometimes contact information and metadata
From there, they can:
- Build targeted lists of manufacturers
- Automate fake RFQ submissions
- Personalize impersonation attempts (“We saw your profile on ThomasNet…”)
In other words, ThomasNet is not just a lead source for you. It’s also a very effective and easy targeting engine for fraudsters.
Is This Happening to You? How to Quantify ThomasNet Lead Quality
A Hard Question: How Many of Your “Leads” Are Actually Real?
You don’t have to guess.
We recommend a simple but powerful exercise:
- Use GA4 to isolate ThomasNet traffic and conversions
- Pull the actual lead details (names, emails, domains, company names)
- Manually review each lead for a specific period (e.g., 30–90 days)
Look for patterns:
- Domains that don’t match real company websites
- Recently registered domains with no online footprint
- Inquiries from geographies you don’t serve
- Addresses that are one letter off from major manufacturers
To make this easier, we have prepared a step-by-step guide for GA4 setup and lead review:
Step-by-step guide: How to Audit ThomasNet Leads in GA4
What You’ll Likely Discover When Looking at Lead Quality from ThomasNet
When our industrial clients complete this exercise, they often find:
- A meaningful percentage of ThomasNet leads are fraudulent, low-intent, or soliciting your company
- Their true cost per qualified lead from ThomasNet is much higher than reported
- Other channels (SEO, paid search, targeted campaigns, email, referral programs) often outperform ThomasNet on cost per opportunity and closed-won deals
That insight becomes the basis for better budget decisions.
Your Lead Verification Playbook: Practical Steps for Your Team
You don’t need a new tech stack to get started. You need a simple, repeatable checklist and a shared internal policy.
Fast Lead Verification Checklist
Give your sales, marketing, and customer service teams this checklist:
1. Compare domains
Does the sender’s domain exactly match the official corporate website?
- Use the company’s website and LinkedIn page as your source of truth.
- acmesteel.com ≠ acmesteels.com
Check domain registration (WHOIS/DNS)
- If the domain was registered very recently and the company claims to be a large, established manufacturer, flag it.
Confirm contact details
- Call the published main phone number from the company’s official website.
- Ask to be connected to the person who submitted the RFQ.
Search the email address
- Paste the full address into search engines and LinkedIn.
- A complete lack of presence, especially for a “senior buyer” at a major firm, should raise questions.
Validate the ThomasNet profile
- Does the listing’s company name, location, and website match the lead information you received?
Check email authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC)
- When possible, inspect email headers to see whether messages pass authentication checks.
Flag and log suspicious domains
- Maintain a shared internal log of suspected fraudulent leads and domains.
- Use that list to quickly recognize repeat offenders and finetune your filters.
Suggested Internal Policy Language
You can adapt this for your own organization or for communication with your leadership team:
We perform proactive verification of inbound leads. If a lead’s contact information cannot be confirmed against the company’s official website or corporate directory, our team will mark it as unverified and initiate secondary validation before passing it to sales. Leads failing verification will be recorded and reported to the channel partner for review.
This gives your team permission to slow down when something looks off, without feeling like they are being unhelpful or unresponsive.
A Standard Response Template for Suspicious Leads
Use this whenever a lead doesn’t quite pass the sniff test:
Subject: Re: Your Inquiry
Thank you for your interest.
To help route this inquiry correctly, could you please confirm your company’s official website and the best corporate phone number where we can reach you? We will not proceed until we can validate the contact.
Best regards,
Your Name
This is professional, polite, and firm. Legitimate buyers will understand. Scammers typically disappear at this stage!
Long-Term Defenses: Beyond One-Off Lead Reviews
Once you have seen how widespread fraudulent leads can be, the next step is to harden your systems, not just react to individual cases.
Technical and Geographic Controls
- Block high-risk countries (e.g., those far outside your service area) at your website, hosting provider, or firewall level.
- Use IP and geography filters to de-prioritize or flag leads from locations where you do not ship or sell.
Smarter Forms and Lead Capture
On your own website (and where possible through ThomasNet forms):
- Add required fields that make it harder for scammers and easier for you, such as:
- Role/purchasing authority
- Expected order timeline
- Project or part specifications
- Company website URL
These fields help you quickly separate serious buyers from low-effort spam.
CRM Rules and Automation
Implement simple rules in your CRM to automatically:
- Flag leads where the email domain does not match the company name
- Flag leads with common typo-squatting patterns (extra letters, swapped letters, unusual TLDs)
- Route suspicious leads into a “Verify First” queue instead of directly to sales
Team Training and Awareness
Your people are your first line of defense:
- Share real examples of spoofed domains and fraudulent RFQs.
- Give them the above checklist.
- Reinforce that it’s okay to question a lead that does not feel right.
Hold Your Lead Sources Accountable
You are paying ThomasNet and other platforms for qualified, legitimate opportunities, not for noise and risk.
Use your audits to:
- Report fraudulent leads directly to ThomasNet
- Request stronger fraud screening, IP filtering, and verification
- Ask whether they can provide a more tightly vetted subset of leads
- Use real data to renegotiate contracts or reconsider renewals
If a significant portion of your ThomasNet leads are fraudulent, that’s not just “part of doing business.” It’s a business case to reallocate your budget toward more efficient, effective, integrated, and secure lead generation programs.
Preventing Poor Lead Quality From ThomasNet: What You Might Do Next
At this point, you may be asking:
- “Is ThomasNet still worth it for us?”
- “Are we overpaying for the few legitimate leads we get?”
- “What could we be doing instead with that budget?”
Here are practical next steps:
1. Tighten Lead Qualification Criteria
Create clear rules for what a “valid lead” looks like:
- Matching domain and company name
- Geography you can realistically serve
- Role/authority level
- Relevant application or product interest
Leads that don’t meet those basics should be filtered, flagged, or rejected early.
2. Compare Lead Quality Across Channels
Run the same GA4 + manual review process across:
- ThomasNet
- Organic search (SEO)
- Paid search/PPC
- Targeted display or social campaigns
- Email and referral programs
Compare:
- % of valid leads
- % that move to opportunity
- % that close and generate revenue
You may find that, even if ThomasNet still produces some wins, other channels deliver more wins at a lower cost.
3. Adjust Your Mix and Contracts
Based on what you learn, you might:
- Reduce or eliminate your ThomasNet spend
- Shift budget toward higher performing channels
- Use your data to negotiate better terms or higher quality filters
The goal is not to “punish ThomasNet” but to optimize your dollars around real revenue, not vanity metrics.
In Summary: Small Variations, Big Consequences
Those tiny variations in email addresses and domains?
They are not harmless typos. They are deliberate attempts to:
- Impersonate legitimate businesses
- Extract pricing, information, or goods
- Exploit the trust you place in platforms like ThomasNet
By:
- Improving lead verification practices
- Automating basic fraud checks in your CRM
- Training your team to recognize impersonation tactics
- Holding lead sources accountable for lead quality
…you can significantly reduce:
- Wasted sales effort
- Distorted performance reporting
- Security and financial risk
- Reputational damage with customers and partners
And you can make better, more confident decisions about where your marketing dollars go next.
Ready to Reconsider Your ThomasNet Program?
If you are seeing suspicious or low-quality leads from ThomasNet, or if you are simply not sure how bad the problem is, our team at Marketing Metrics can help.
We will:
- Audit your ThomasNet performance in GA4
- Quantify true lead quality and ROI
- Recommend alternative industrial marketing tactics that attract real buyers, not bots and bad actors
If your “leads” are not really leads, it’s time to change that.
👉 Book a consultation with the digital marketing experts at Marketing Metrics Corp.
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