Company Research: Rankings & Web Directories

This is the free (registration required) version of the Thomas Register, - the long-standing directory of manufacturers. Thomas currently contains over 189,000 companies in the United States and Canada. Search by category, company or brand name. Includes product information, basic directory info, plus links to some manufacturers' catalogs and company URLs.

REF. DESK HG4905 .M88
The Mergent Industry Review contains financial information and ratios for thousands of companies in over 70 industry groups, and it ranks the top companies in each group by criteria such as revenues, profit margin, return on capital, and the price/earnings ratio.

Ratings and rankings of Boston area businesses.

Industry Week magazine does an annual database of the world's 1,000 largest publicly-held manufacturing firms. Sort the list by company name, country, industry, rank, or percentage of growth in revenue. Older editions of the IW 1000 are also still available:

Entrepreneur.com's FranchiseZone produces this list of the top franchise operations of the year. They also do several other rankings. Check these out at the left of the opening page.