From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Encyclopedia.com

Online encyclopedia

Summary

Online encyclopedia

Field	Value
name	Encyclopedia.com
logo	Encyclopedia.com logo.svg
logo_alt	Encyclopedia.com logo
screenshot	Encyclopedia.com homepage.png
collapsible	yes
caption	Homepage in October 2024
url
commercial	Yes
type	Online encyclopedia
registration	No
language	English
content_license	Copyrighted
owner	Gale
creator	Infonautics
launch_date
revenue	Display advertising
oclc	405663034
current_status	Online

Encyclopedia.com is an online encyclopedia. It aggregates information, images, and videos from other published dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference works.

History

The website was launched by Infonautics in March 1998. Infonautics was acquired by Tucows in August 2001.

In August 2002, Patrick Spain bought Encyclopedia.com and its sister website eLibrary from Tucows and incorporated them into a new company called Alacritude, LLC (a combination of Alacrity and Attitude). The business became known as HighBeam Research and was eventually sold to Gale. For a time the website was operated by Chicago-based company Highbeam Research, a subsidiary of reference publisher Gale, which itself is a subsidiary of Cengage.

Enycyclopedia.com saw its traffic decline by more than three quarters from approximately 4 million visits monthly in 2022, to under 1 million in 2025.

Content

Encyclopedia.com allows users to access information on a subject that is derived from multiple encyclopedias and dictionary sources, and it has nearly 200,000 entries and 50,000 topic summaries. It provides a collection of online encyclopedias and entries from various sources, including Oxford University Press, Columbia Encyclopedia, and Gale, its parent company.

References

"Reference: Encyclopedias".
(March 1998). "Infonautics Launches Encyclopedia.Com".
Magid, Larry. (August 15, 2002). "BASICS; A Reference Library On Disc or Online". The New York Times.
Hane, Paula J.. (August 26, 2002). "Tucows Sells Two Former Infonautics Services". Information Today, Inc..
Creguer, Tina. (December 15, 2008). "Gale Acquires HighBeam Research, Inc.". Cengage.
Gwen. (December 16, 2008). "Internet News: Gale Acquired HighBeam Research".
Myers, Fort. (July 27, 2011). "Partnership With HighBeam Research and Encyclopedia.com". [[Yippy, Inc.]].
(2025-04-23). "Digital 2025: exploring trends in Wikipedia traffic".
Gross, Melanie. (May 21, 2012). "Wikipedia down? Try these alternatives".
"About Encyclopedia.com".
"The World's #1 Online Encyclopedia".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

american-online-encyclopedias 21st-century-encyclopedias internet-properties-established-in-1998

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Encyclopedia.com — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report