Answers.com plans to buy Dictionary.com

Answers Corp. announced that it was planning to buy Dictionary.com for $100 million, which is owned by the Lexico Publishing Group. Lexico also owns Thesaurus.com and Reference.com and in June its sites got traffic of 11.5 million unique hits in the US according to comScore Media Metrix. Answers.com feels that the purchase is worthwhile as Lexico's sites receive three times more page views than Answers.com, while they earn only one third of what Answers.com earns. According to Steve Steinberg, chief financial officer for 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. We will also offer cross-promotion to other Answers sites. For example, this acquisition will allow us to introduce our WikiAnswers property to Lexico's 11.5 million monthly unique users."