Ask.com acquires Lexico Publishing Group for $100m

Commonly known as the 4th largest search engine in the world, Ask.com has picked up a group of reference web sites to expand its market share of the online search pie.

With a $100m offer, Ask.com announced on Thursday that it would acquire Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of a network of web sites which include Dictionary.com, Reference.com and Thesaurus.com. The move is expected to increase Ask.com traffic by 11% worldwide and 9% in the UK.

Ask has also trimmed its work force by 8% in March as part of the move to remain competitive against Google, which has climbed towards 70% of all U.S searches [according to online consumer behavior analyst by comScore]. The earlier strategy in March was also to focus on women above 30 and questions related to health and entertainment. By going back to basic and focussing on answering straight forward questions, the acquisition is now seen as a natural addition to Ask's direction.

According to comScore, Dictionary.com drew 22.1 million visitors worldwide in March. Previously there was a proposed deal from Answers, parent of Answer.com to purchase Lexico. But the deal was called off when financing was not secured. 

With Ask's recent acquisition, we can probably see the search engine taking up for a more visible position in the fiercely competitive search industry now.