Ask.com, the fourth-ranked search engine, has completed its acquisition of Lexico Publishing Group, which owns Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.
Ask.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of InterActiveCorp, had announced the all-cash deal in mid-May. Financial terms of the deal, which closed Thursday, were not released. Lexico, a privately held company based in Long Beach, Calif., debuted in 1995 with Dictionary.com.
Altogether, Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com had more than 28 million unique visitors in March, according to Lexico.
In May, Ask.com said the acquisition would increase its unique monthly users by 11 percent to 145 million.
According to statistics-tracker Hitwise, Ask.com had 4.23 percent of the U.S. search market in May. Microsoft had 5.89 percent, Yahoo had 19.95 percent, and Google overwhelmed them all with 68.29 percent.
Answers, the creator of Answers.com, plans to purchase Lexico Publishing Group, the parent of Dictionary.com.
Through the deal, Answers will inherit a collection of Web properties that "generate approximately three times the total page views of Answers.com," according to an Answers statement.
In addition to Dictionary.com, Lexico also owns Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.
Lexico Web sites had a total of 11.5 million unique users in June, Answers Chairman and CEO Robert S. Rosenschein said in a Tuesday Webcast.
"The combined properties (of Answers and Lexico) would have reached a total of 22.5 million unique users in June, ranking it as the 28th largest U.S. property. This leap would rank us higher than such well-known Web properties as ESPN, WebMD, Craigslist and iVillage," said Rosenschein.
But it is the Dictionary.com URL that seems to be generating the most interest, both from Answers and the general public.
About 85 percent of Lexico traffic is directly from people who type the word "dictionary" in a search engine and then click on Dictionary.com from the results. Lexico, however, only makes one third as much per page in advertising revenue as Answers.com, according to a company statement.
Answers said it plans to capitalize on that search phenomenon by directing people to more than just dictionary content.
Dictionary.com and other Lexico sites will soon begin to see more of the encyclopedic content offered by Answers from sites like .
Answers said that combining encyclopedic content from Answers properties with Dictionary.com's URL popularity will help it to be more competitive against Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia.
The $100 million transaction, pending closing conditions, will likely be completed by fall.
Think it's a coincidence that today's "Word of the Day" is gallimaufry?
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