avtoradiator.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod company OOO "AvtoradiatorRegionSnab," which sold car radiators, heater radiators, spark plugs and other auto parts. The company's office and warehouse were located at 603127, Nizhny Novgorod, Konovalova Street, building 6, office 310; the page listed the phone number (8312) 22-73-32[1]. The site occupied a third-level domain in the Nizhny Novgorod zone r52.ru; its first snapshot in the web archive is dated June 20, 2003[1], and the last one October 6, 2008[3]. Today the domain no longer exists.

The company and its product range

As the home page stated, by 2003 the company had "nine years of existence" behind it and operated amid a dynamically changing economic situation "both in Russia and in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1]. The core of the business was representing manufacturing plants on the Nizhny Novgorod market: the site listed the Shadrinsk Auto-Assembly Plant, the Likhoslavl Radiator Plant, OAO "Avtomash-Radiator" (Bishkek), the Buguruslan Radiator Plant, OAO "Radiator" (Orenburg), "Iran-Radiator," the Auto-Tractor Ignition Spark Plug Plant (OAO "ZAZS," Engels), and NPF "Gran LTD"[1]. A separate line was devoted to BOSCH spark plugs for foreign makes — BMW, Mercedes (spelled "Mersedes" on the page), Opel, Volvo, Daewoo, Toyota[1]. The range stated in 2008 was broader: cooling radiators, heaters, fuel pumps, jacks, starters, generators, auto electrics, shock absorbers — for cars, minibuses, trucks, buses, and construction and agricultural machinery[3].

What the site looked like

The home page doubled as the "About the Company" section: the heading read "AvtoradiatorRegionSnab: About the Company," with a menu column listing the plants on the left and a solid block of text about the company on the right[1]. The menu names were riddled with typos and inconsistent with the main text: "Likhoslavolsky Radiator Plant," "Shadrinsky Auto-Assembly-ator Plant," "Engelsky Ignition Spark Plug Plant," and NPF "Gran ltd." was attributed to Saratov in the menu, whereas the text placed it in Engels[1].

The commercial offer was laid out on the same page. The warehouse was located next to the office, so paperwork and shipping happened in one place; cashless, cash, and promissory-note payment forms were accepted, along with deferred payment and a flexible discount system for regular customers; separately, in capital letters, the page promised "FREE delivery of parts by motor transport to any region of Russia"[1]. At the bottom of the page stood four slogans — about the range of Russia's leading manufacturers, compliance with GOST and SNiP standards, free delivery "no questions asked," and agents who "will find you anywhere in Russia, all you need to do is call us"[1]. The contact address was an email on the provider's free service — arsnn@rol.ru[1].

The snapshot from June 5, 2004 reproduces the 2003 page word for word — over the course of a year neither the text, the menu, nor the contacts changed[2]. Such immobility was typical of corporate "business-card" sites in the Nizhny Novgorod internet of the early 2000s: a page was made once and left untouched for years.

Change of the sign's owner: ROSKOR

By 2008 the site had undergone a change visible right in the text: the layout, paragraphs, and list of plants stayed the same, but the name "AvtoradiatorRegionSnab" was everywhere in the body text replaced with OOO "ROSKOR" — down to the phrase about the warehouse next to the office and the free delivery[3]. The email changed too: instead of arsnn@rol.ru it now read roskor@internet2.ru[3]. At the same time, the site's title and domain still belonged to "AvtoradiatorRegionSnab," and the address on Konovalova Street and the phone number (8312) 22-73-32 remained the same[3].

At the same time the page acquired the hallmarks of search engine optimization: the title expanded into a listing of goods — "AvtoradiatorRegionSnab: spark plugs, car radiators, cooling radiators, jacks, fuel pumps, starters, generators: About the Company" — and the list of plants in the left-hand menu was replaced with product categories, including "Fuel pumps, jacks (OAO 'ShAAZ')"[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site is known to us from the nn.ru catalog directory, where it was listed with a description of its product range; it does not appear in the counter.nn.ru samples collected for the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, and no votes for it were recorded in our data. It does not appear in the final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[4]. This was typical for a narrowly specialized corporate page in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of that era: the site did not exist for an audience or for contests, but as a reference card with an address, a phone number, and a list of supplier plants for wholesale buyers of auto parts.

How it closed

After April 2008 there are no more snapshots of the home page in the web archive: the last one preserved is dated April 6, 2008[3]. The domain avtoradiator.r52.ru no longer exists, and no successor to the site is recorded in our data. Thus, of the site's five-year history, three archived snapshots of the home page remain, spanning its entire biography: the unchanging "business card" of 2003–2004 and the 2008 page, rewritten for a different legal entity and for search queries.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)