The Google search engine is not just about finding information from other websites. One of the most valuable aspects of Google search is its ability to offer a wide range of information like exchange rates, stock quotes, movie timings, dictionary lookup, synonym search etc. from the website’s search results page itself. There are nearly 22 such special features that Google offers apart from the actual search function.
One of the most popular among them, synonym search has now been given a major face-lift as Google has quietly rolled out the new Google.com/dictionary page. This is a significant improvement from what existed previously. In the earlier version, searching for specific words on Google search offered you a link to the word’s definition from Answers.com on the top right corner of the search results. Now, you are instead shown the link to Google’s dictionary page for the corresponding word.
The new Google dictionary offers you synonyms in 22 different languages and also lets you translate words to or from English to each of these several languages. This is a very interesting integration of Google’s dictionary feature with the existing translation engine available on Google’s Language Tools page. However, a test run with Indian languages was not very satisfactory.
While this has been a nice addition to the search engine, the fall-out guy in this launch could be Answers.com. Google had partnered with the Israel based company for close to five years in offering definitions for commonly searched terms on their website. However, the CEO of Answers.com, Bob Rosenschein has denied any appreciable loss of traffic due to the move claiming that Google’s definition link contributed to less than 5% of their website’s traffic.
Google’s move could also potentially serve as a significant challenge to the niche websites in the segment like Dictionary.com and the online version of Merriam Webster. However that is something that we can only study in long run. How do you think this will pan out? Do tell us in the comments.
