A thin-title plant is a database of the county records that is set up by a third party.  There are many forms of thin title plants, some go as far as to automate the search process, returning all relavent documents that meet the search criteria.  A thin title plant is often a conglomeration of records from many different sources of on-line data stores.

A lot of them seem to be sending documents over-seas to be scanned and indexed cheaply and then offered to consumers on-line for a fee.  I haven't had any experience using them, but some say that they don't have the necessary quality or the depth of information that the county records have.

The benefit they offer is the speed at which the information can be retreived and the convenience of getting the information on-line. 

This is my take on thin title plants...

Robert A. Franco
SOURCE OF TITLE