SAN FRANCISCO — To distinguish itself from Google and other online big players, Ask.com is going to buy loads of internet reference sites including Dictionary.com.

In its purchase of Lexico Publishing Group LLC, Ask.com is also trying to get Thesaurus.com and Reference.com besides Dictionary.com. The terms of this deal have not been disclosed but expected to be announced on Thursday.

Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com are widely used as reference tools and with their addition, Ask is trying to make more money by showing ads to people who want answers about their basic questions.

Jim Safak, who runs Ask for IAC/InterActiveCorp, states that almost 30% of the search questions enter on Ask.com want reference material and we are trying to ‘super serve’ those who seek reference material.

Safka also indicated that Ask would take necessary steps to provide more information about health and entertainment.

To expose its technology to a greater number of audiences Ask is planning to fix some of its search engine results on the reference sites.

Dictionary.com is considered the most popular among these newly attained sites that drew almost 22.1 million visitors globally during March. Data from comScore Inc suggests that there is an increase of almost 20% if it is compared to the same period last year.
Some material from Dictionary.com and other attained reference sites will be given at Ask’s search result page known as “Smart answers”.

It is hope that Dictionary.com and other reference sites will get a financial boost from their new ownership.

For a long time, Ask has been depending on Google’s advertising smartness to get better revenue but now it is spending huge amounts in up-gradation of its own search engineers as a better substitute to Google.

Ask’s many innovations are quite impressive but the analysts believe that Ask’s efforts will not make any difference in competitive setting of the current online market.

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