"The major search engines modify their algorithms all the time," added Mr. Rosenschein. "This change only demonstrates the sound business rationale behind our agreement to purchase Dictionary.com, because it underscores a primary motivation for the deal: to secure a steady source of direct traffic and mitigate our current dependence on search engine algorithms.

On a pro forma basis, we expect at least 70% of our total traffic to come from people navigating directly to our Web properties or typing the term 'dictionary' in a search engine.