Ask Buys Lexico… Is My Word Of The Day In Jeopardy?

Perhaps 2008 will end up being a year everyone will remember as one of the most volatile on record in the search industry. Between the search engines’ shopping sprees and heated merger debates, ASK has just made one of its smarter moves since dropping the poor butler only after he’d lost the extra weight and bought a new suit.

To be honest, I loved Jeeves (pictured to the left without the extra chin) but hated that search engine in the days when he reigned. I could never force myself to search seriously there, even though the idea of asking a question in natural language was intriguing back then. While the homepage was more inviting than Yahoo’s homepage with all those directory category links floating around, the ASK Jeeves results pages were cluttered with so much meaningless and irrelevant information that by 1999, when I discovered Google’s uncluttered and more relevant search results, it became as a sight for sore eyes.

But getting back to poor old Jeeves, now buried in a tomb of cement somewhere, and how ASK has managed well enough even without the hired help. Sure, it’s floundered around, but it’s also still hanging on in fourth place, with just under a 5% share of the market (according to the latest comScore figures) and has, after a debacle of debate over plans and rumors that they would become a women-only portal, managed to make a really good purchase with their recent decision to buy Lexico.

In my opinion, it’s a smart move to leverage the simplicity and history of Lexico’s well-known reference resources. For folks like me, who are on the Internet seemingly all day, every day, there are search engines and there are reference sites. If I’m writing an article like this one, and need a quick definition or an alternate word I check my dictionary and my thesaurus. I haven’t owned either of those books in print form since I graduated college, but it’s now ingrained in me to type dictionary.com and thesaurus.com in my favorite browser to quickly find what I’m looking for. We’re creatures of habit. I admit I lean heavily towards Googling things I’m looking for both personally and professionally and rarely check the other search engines unless I’m looking to see specific improvements or new features. So what better way for ASK.com to become better associated as a reference site than to purchase the tools I already use?

Oh, I know. Google’s got dictionary results. You type in a query like define:tedious and up pops the definition right at the top of the page. It is handy and sometimes even interesting in a geeky sort of way. For example, here’s the Google definition search result for tedious.

The geek in me finds the related phrases fascinating. In this instance I’m glad to know that cleaning is, in fact, tedious and it’s not just me who thinks so:

While I actually did use this little feature quite often upon learning about Google’s definition search refinement, the newness quickly wore off and I eventually abandoned it in every day practice. I was either too lazy to remember to add the define: operator to my search query on Google (simply preferring to type the word in the box over at dictionary.com) or maybe I just liked getting an entire page of official definitions with the ability to click over to Thesaurus.com results as well. I’m hoping it was the latter that caused my faithful return to Dictionary.com’s definition results.

The truth is, I repeatedly chose and continue to choose Dictionary.com over every other possible way to find the simple definitions I look for. Google’s not the only one who can provide that information. Type define:tedious in the search query box over at Yahoo and, while it doesn’t give you the nice neat line at the top, you can still quickly surmise that the word tedious means tiresome:

And MSN’s Live actually does a better job than Yahoo with definition results:

See, their first result is also a definition. And for the record, yes, when my query includes the word “define” a definition as the top result is indeed useful. so you’ll excuse me for now clicking on Yes to provide that feedback.

ASK currently has its own reference results (a dictionary and a thesaurus) so they provide the definition right at the top of their search results as well:

I’d argue they currently provide the most helpful definition results page because at a glance I can see the definition in the first position as well as the pronunciation. And I can narrow my search to see the antonyms of tedious if I wanted to.

But even though I can easily find simple definitions from any of the major search players, I (and according to Quantacast, around 52,886 other people each month) still visit Dictionary.com to find definitions to words. That’s brand strength that can be compared to the likes of Google. Don’t know how many treefrog species are in Africa? Well, Google it and find out. Don’t know the meaning of tedious? Well, look it up at Dictionary.com. It’s a no-brainer.

So for ASK to tie itself to the already highly visible, highly respected, well trafficked, and well liked resource sites is, in my opinion, nothing short of a brilliant coup for a search engine struggling to improve visibility, branding, and image. Thank goodness for them, Answers.com couldn’t manage to put together the $100 million deal last summer. The details of the all-cash purchase made by ASK yesterday weren’t officially disclosed, but I’d assume there’s two happy California Campers celebrating this weekend.

While I do contend it’s a good move for ASK, I won’t pretend I’m not worried about the buy-out. I only hope that ASK can pull off integrating the resource identities with their search portal without losing the appeal of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and the other Lexico resource sites. I am hoping, along with the other 9,999,999 subscribers to the Word of the Day, that the ASK.com purchase of Lexico Publishing doesn’t mean subfusc skies ahead.

That’s right, today’s Word of the Day is… subfusc!

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Ask.com to Acquire Lexico, Owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com

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