Reference.com is an

online encyclopedia An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Some examples include pre-World Wide Web services that offered the '' Academic American Encyclopedia'' beginning in 1980, Enc ...

that organizes content that uses a question-and-answer format. Articles are organized into hierarchical categories. Before IAC restructured the site following an acquisition in 2008, Reference.com comprised multiple reference works, and disclosed its sources.

History

Reference.com was launched by InReference, Inc in February 1997. The site was later acquired by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. In 2005, Lexico announced that Reference.com would begin offering searches of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

content. The popularity of Dictionary.com had been greatly boosted by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

's practice of offering a link at the top of their search results that goes to the Dictionary.com definition. This exclusive relationship was terminated without explanation to the public when the Google links were redirected to definitions at Answers.com. (In December 2009, the Answers.com links were replaced with Google's own dictionary.) Google added a Dictionary.com definition link for certain search words in a non-exclusive relationship (along with links to definitions from a few other commercial reference websites). On 3 July 2008, IAC acquired Lexico Publishing Group, LLC and its three properties: Thesaurus.com, Reference.com, and Dictionary.com.

Sources

Reference.com reproduced content from external sources. The site's sources included other online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and a search of terms found on other websites such as Wikipedia and the CIA ''World Factbook''. The site could also search

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

groups and other

mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...

s. The encyclopedia had articles from such sources as the 2004 ''Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia'', the ''Crystal Reference Encyclopedia'', and later the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

. Its

online dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for logographic languages), which may include info ...

indexed the ''

American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

'', '' Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary'', the

Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab ...

, the ''Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary'',

Acronym Finder Acronym Finder (AF) is a free, online, searchable dictionary and database of abbreviations (acronyms, initialisms, and others) and their meanings. The entries are classified into categories such as ''Information technology, Information Technolog ...

, '' Stedman's Medical Dictionary'', ''Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary'', the ''On-line Medical Dictionary'', and ''

WordNet WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words that links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into ''synsets'' with short definitions and usage examples. It can thu ...

''. Its

thesaurus A thesaurus (: thesauri or thesauruses), sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings (or in simpler terms, a book where one can find different words with similar me ...

was based on multiple versions of ''

Roget's Thesaurus ''Roget's Thesaurus'' is a widely used English-language thesaurus, created in 1805 by Peter Mark Roget (1779–1869), British physician, natural theologian and lexicographer. History It was released to the public on 29 April 1852. Roget was ...

''. The site's

web directory A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and the ...

was an interface to the Open Directory Project, and its web search feature used

Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the World Wide Web, Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze an ...

. An interface to

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

was added in 2008.

User tracking

Reference.com in 2010 topped the list compiled by ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' ranking websites by how many third-party tracking cookies were added to the user's computer. Reference.com added 234 tracking cookies when encountering a first-time user.

References

{{IAC Online English dictionaries American websites Websites which mirror Wikipedia IAC Inc. Internet properties established in 1997 Thesauri (lexicography)