“The first sentence on the first page that Britannica published in 1768 says, ‘Utility ought to be the principal intention of every publication,’ and this imperative to meet the user’s needs is more important today, in the digital world, than ever before. Electoral College work? Does listening to Mozart in the womb really make babies smarter? Britannica also makes it easier for young learners and non-native English speakers to look up word definitions without leaving the page by linking hard words to definitions from Merriam-Webster, a sister company. Another recently launched initiative, Demystified, provides engaging and revealing answers to commonly asked questions such as: What’s the difference between veins and arteries? How does the U.S. A search on Barack Obama brings up not only a basic overview of his life and presidency but also deeper coverage of his role in historical events such as the Syrian Civil War.īritannica Insights is the latest resource in the Encyclopaedia Britannica toolbox.A search on “climate change” presents both quick facts as well as a “deep dive” into coverage of climate change through geologic time and the impact of climate change on rivers, glaciers and icebergs.This capability enables Encyclopaedia Britannica to derive interesting relationships that are not directly encoded but can be logically derived from facts. On social media it is hard to discern whether the information is coming from verified sources.īritannica Insights, powered by the world’s largest verified semantic general-reference dataset, surfaces unique relationships and uncommon insights.On user-generated content sites an answer could be right today and wrong tomorrow because of warring factions trying to slant information to benefit their own agendas.Searchers click beyond the first page less than five percent of the time to look for more credible information that may be buried in back pages.Current search engine algorithms are not yet advanced enough to differentiate between credible and plausible information.He pointed to four factors, which together explain why finding credible information is getting harder: Britannica Insights works with major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others – on the Chrome browser.Ī serious problem, Krishnan noted, is that most web searchers stick to the top 5-10 results they get and walk away with an answer that may not be accurate. Britannica Insights is available for download at and delivers on the promise, “Save time.

2022 encyclopædia britannica inc