Are dictionary sites doomed?
By Paul Biba
bookofjoe had a, probably, prescient little piece yesterday about dictionary sites. I can’t do better than quote from Dr. Stirt’s excellent blog:
Chadwick Matlin, in an interesting article in today’s Washington Post Business section, took a close look at the current state of online dictionaries and how Google, if it wanted to, could effectively destroy them — in a heartbeat.
Long story short: when you put a word into the Google search box, you don’t get its meaning but rather a list of sites which offer the definition.
With Microsoft’s Bing, on the other hand, when you put a word in the search box, the definition appears up top as the first result.
Wrote Matlin, “The dictionary sites know that a new day is coming…. Bing, remember, is small-bore. It routes only 10.7 percent of the country’s searches compared with Google’s 64.6 percent. (Though it is gaining market share quickly.) The thing that would really upset the dictionary sites’ business would be a change in the way Google handles their content. What happens if Google starts acting like Bing?”
“If Google goes Bing, then dictionaries’ traffic will go poof.”
Indeed.
September 28th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Then how will those of us who never take one source’s word on anything find “a list of sites which offer [one possible] definition”?
September 28th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Chadwick Matlin’s article on the technique that Bing uses to potentially disintermediate dictionaries is worthwhile. However, the article does not mention a strategy that Google implemented years ago to steer dictionary and encyclopedia searches to its favored destination. When you search for the example word “loquacious” and you look in the upper right hand corner you will see “loquacious [definition]“. If you click on the “definition” link it takes you to the website of Answers.com.
Answers.com provides comprehensive information compiled from a vast number of resources, e.g., The American Heritage Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, Columbia Encyclopedia, Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, E-Spindle Word Tutor, Wizcom Translations, Wikipedia and more. Do a search for “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” on Google and follow the “definition” link in the upper right to see a wide-ranging collection of data displayed. I suspect that the source material gathered is licensed.
It does require an extra click to reach the Answers.com website, and Google downplays the “definition” link by placing it in the corner. However, it is clear that Google knows all about disintermediation, and yet the company hesitates. Google could directly present material from Answers.com on its search results page. Yet, Google is already regularly denounced as a quasi-monopoly and it probably does not wish to further alienate additional groups.
September 28th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Those dictionary sites are awful. Two popup boxes, cluttered with box all for the sake of giving a one sentence definition. Sorry, they’re not providing worthwhile information to surfers.
By the way, if you type loquacious and definition into the google box, the definition will appear on the search results page.
Another thing. Am I just paranoid, or has Google disabled the feature that keeps 100 search results per page? Previously, you set your preferences and it always showed 100 search results. Now you have to manually set it every time you want 100 search results. This is all part of the secret conspiracy of google to make you view more ads.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
There are dictionary sites and then there are dictionary sites. If all you provide is a single 1-sentence definition and lots of obnoxious ads, you’re not very appealing. If you provide a whole page worth of information on the word, its senses, its uses, and examples, your site can be quite appealing, and search engines can help rather than hurt it.
Looking up “loquacious” on a site like wordnik.com, for example gives you much more information, including definitions from several dictionaries, examples from literature and Twitter, audible pronunciations, statistics on the word’s use, and various other bits of info either on the fonr page or behind various tabs. Oh, and one ad down the sidebar. Quite nice. (I’m a bit biased, since my spouse works for Wordnik, but compare it yourself against other dictionary sites to see what I mean.)
September 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
if you type “define loquacious” into Google you get links to various definitions. Each link contains most of the entry.
September 29th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Robert Nagle and Steve Millman point out that you can type “define targetword” or “targetword definition” to obtain a definition for targetword from Google.
That is a good point, and Chadwick Matlin mentions it in the original Washington Post/Slate article referenced above. Google presents a definition extracted from the WordNet lexical database at Princeton at the top of the search results. If you type a phrase such as “define blue helmet” then Google extracts a short definition from Wikipedia.
Thus Google is willing to grab search traffic when a user executes an additional act. The user can type the six-letter word “define” or click on a link label “definition” in the upper right after the initial search. Matlin points out that Bing demands no additional action from the user. Definitions are displayed by default.
John Mark Ockerbloom mentions Wordnik. That website was cited on Teleread on September 8th and it looks great. Good fortune to the website and your spouse.