Answers Corporation, which runs one of the big reference sites, Answers.com has set a purchase agreement with Lexico Publishing Group, LLC and they are acquiring the whole company, which includes 3 top reference websites on the web – Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

The deal was setup for $100 million in Cash. According to a traffic source, Lexico could pull in 11.5 million unique monthly users in the U.S. during the month of June 2007. It generated revenues of $7 million in 2007. Answers Corp. is surely benefited with this deal due to the following factors -

Lexico’s network generates 3 times more traffic than Answers Corp.
Monetization was less in lexico’s network, which can be boosted anytime and earnings can go high for Answers Corp. after the deal.
To make it clear, here is what answers.com has to say actually about the key benefits -

• Page Views: Lexico’s Web properties currently generate approximately three times the total page views of Answers.com.
• Monetization: Lexico’s Web properties currently monetize at approximately one-third the rate of Answers.com, presenting material revenue upside.
• Direct Traffic: Over 85% of Lexico’s traffic is direct from end users or people searching specifically for the term “dictionary” in search engines. The resulting shift in traffic mix should significantly reduce Answers.com’s current reliance on search engine algorithms.
• Market Leadership: Based on the June 2007 comScore data, the addition of Lexico’s Web properties will increase Answers reach to over 22.5 million monthly unique users, which would rank #28 in the top U.S. properties.

Lexico and Answers, both would be worked on separately and i think they are not going to merge any form of it. This is one of the awesome deals i have seen lately.