auditors.by.ru was the website of OOO "Nizhny Novgorod Audit Firm" (Нижегородская аудиторская фирма), a company founded in Nizhny Novgorod in 1996 that provided audit, accounting, consulting, and legal services[1]. The contact section of the home page listed the address "603005, Nizhny Novgorod, Nesterova St., 9, office 302," phone and fax 19-51-56, and the email audit@nnovgorod.ru[1]. The site lived on the free BY.RU hosting service as a third-level domain; the surviving web-archive snapshots span 2002–2005[1][4].

One page instead of a site

Formally the site had a four-item menu — "about the firm," "our services," "our clients," "how to find us" — but all four sections fit on a single home page, one below another[1]. The header carried a slogan that also appeared in the window title: "ALL TYPES OF AUDIT SERVICES AT REASONABLE PRICES"[1]. Below the menu were four identical banners for the "VA-BANK Business" affiliate program, and at the very bottom a line of keywords — "Audit. Nizhny Novgorod. Nizhegorodskaya." — repeated four times[1].

The list of services ran to about a dozen and a half lines: audits of financial and business activity, restoration of accounting records, "express audit of financial statements for investors," preventive audits over six or nine months, setting up accounting and developing accounting policy, help with tax disputes, assessment of enterprise solvency and liquidity, annual subscription service, and compilation of regulatory documents on a given subject[1]. A separate line promised "comprehensive automation of enterprise accounting and management"[1].

The firm and its clients

According to the home page, the firm operated under "License No. 003398 of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation for general audit, dated November 23, 1999, issued for a term of 3 years," and was registered under Certificate No. 3051 of August 14, 1996, issued by the administration of the Sovetsky District of Nizhny Novgorod[1]. The staff included seven certified auditors, and over the years, by the firm's own count, it had served about 50 client enterprises[1].

A dozen clients were named individually, and the list shows the firm worked beyond the regional center: OOO "EkOil," ZAO "Tatneft-NN," OOO "Nizhegorodsakhar" (Sergach), ZAO "Ekoil-Energiya" (Sarov), OAO "Vyksa-Les" (Vyksa), OAO "Eksan" (Arzamas), OOO "Nizhny Novgorod Design Institute" (Нижегородский Проектный институт), ZAO "Inteks-S," OOO "Geostar," ZAO "Krona," ZAO "Rusneftinvest," OOO "Gris"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory — a catalog of Nizhny Novgorod sites from which Counter.nn.ru grew — the site was listed under the card "Nizhegorodskaya Auditorskaya Firma" with a two-word description: "audit services"[5]. The "Rating" figure on the card changed from snapshot to snapshot: on October 29, 2002 it showed "Rating: 7"[5], while a snapshot of another section of the directory from November 17 of the same year showed "Rating: 3"[6]. For comparison, neighboring entries in the category sometimes showed "none"[6]. More on how to read these samples in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the surviving results table of the voting held by Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004, the domain auditors.by.ru does not appear[7]; no votes for it are recorded in our data. This is the usual state of affairs for a corporate business card: Nizhny Novgorod Internet of that era voted for portals, forums, and entertainment projects, while sites like this one lived in the directory as a line with a link and a phone number.

How it closed

The home page never changed throughout the entire period of observation: the snapshots from November 7, 2002, April 17, 2004, and January 31, 2005 match word for word — the same client list, the same phone number, the same phrase "has already been providing" services "for seven years," and the same mention of the 1999 license issued for three years[1][2][3].

The site was not killed by its owner but by hosting policy. In the snapshot from October 30, 2005, the address returned a BY.RU service page instead: "You have requested the page of the site 'www.auditors.by.ru,' which has not been updated for too long, has been deemed outdated, and has been moved to the archive"; the same page named the date of the last edit — March 2, 2005, that is, 242 days before the snapshot[4]. Instead of content, the page offered to unpack the site's archive, plus a search and the hosting directory[4]. The last snapshot in the web archive is dated the same day, October 30, 2005[4]. Checking the address while preparing this article returned a standard placeholder page headed "This domain may be for sale."

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (BY.RU service page) (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, November 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)