Answers Corp. Buying The Dictionary

Answers Corp. is spending $100 million to acquire Lexico Publishing, which runs Dictionary.com.

Answers Corp., which runs the Answers.com site, has announced plans to buy Lexico Publishing Group for $100 million. Lexico runs Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com .   So why would the company want to spend big bucks on the acquisition? The answer is in the page numbers and the potential. Last month the Lexico sites had 11.5 million unique users in the U.S. alone, generating three times the total page views Answers.com could muster. However, they only earn one-third the income of Answers.

“The bottom line is — with three times the traffic and one-third the monetization rate, together with our monetization expertise — the upside potential is compelling,” said the chief financial officer for Answers, Steve Steinberg. “We will also offer cross-promotion to other Answers sites.”

Answers plans to complete the purchase by fall, assuming it can come up with the money. If it succeeds, then the combined properties will rank second behind Wikipedia in education reference.