nn.price.ru was the Nizhny Novgorod address of Price.ru, a Russian price-comparison service, serving as the city's entry point into the shared database of retailers' price lists. In the nn.ru site directory the resource was listed under the name NN.PRICE.RU and described as follows: "Information about firms in Nizhny Novgorod. The most complete database of prices on computers and hi-tech. Bulk order processing service. A professional club of firms dealing in computers and hi-tech"[6]. Web archive snapshots of the address are dated from August 22, 2003 to April 28, 2012[5]. The footer of the surviving pages names the portal's owner as OOO "Price Express," with a copyright notice "© 1997 — 2011," and affiliation with Rambler Media[1].

What the home page showed

All four surviving snapshots lead to the shared portal price.ru: the nn.price.ru address opened the same storefront, where the city was chosen with a switcher and Moscow was selected by default[1]. The top of the page carried a database counter. On March 11, 2011, it promised, as the home page put it, "Find the best price among 25,024,056 offers from 2,156 firms!"[1], and on April 13 of the same year — 27,956,483 offers from 2,218 firms[2]. A year later the figures looked different: on March 15, 2012 — 32,884,334 items from 1,820 firms[3], and on April 28, 2012 — 35,767,050 items from 1,972 firms[4]. That is, the product database grew by roughly a third over the year, while the number of firms supplying price lists, conversely, shrank.

In 2011 the product menu consisted of the sections "Computer equipment," "Phones, two-way radio," "Photo, video, audio," "Portable equipment," "Office equipment," "Peripheral equipment," "Consumables," "Networks," "Automotive goods," and then went far beyond the computer theme — household appliances, furniture, plumbing fixtures, perfumery, groceries, clothing and footwear, services[1]. In 2012 the page reported that "price.ru has 29 sections"[3]. Applied selections were added to the catalog: tire selection by manufacturer, profile width and height, and rim diameter, as well as a "Budget solutions" section with sets such as "Cameras up to 2,000 rubles," "Laptops up to 10,000 rubles," "Mobile phones up to 1,000 rubles"[3].

A notable part of the home page was taken up by the editorial feed of a sister project — reviews and the news stream of Ferra.ru, displayed directly on the page[2]. Separate blocks carried "Market news" retelling press releases with a "Prices for …" link, and a "Large orders" feed — buyer requests with a date and delivery city, for example "March 11 Cases, memory, power supplies to Moscow," "March 2 Servers to Tomsk"[1]. Alongside it stood an "I want to order" form with fields for quantity, contact person, e-mail, phone, and a CAPTCHA image[1].

For firms: the professional club and price-list placement

The second half of the service was aimed not at buyers but at trading companies. The "For our clients" column carried the links "Professional Club login," "Access to services," "Payment receipt," and the "Professional Club" section listed "Press releases," "Conferences, seminars and exhibitions," "Market news," "Vacancies and resumes"[1]. The footer offered "Price list placement" and "Advertising network"[1], and by the spring of 2012 a "New 'Start' plan" had appeared[4]. It was precisely this layer — a firm's paid presence in the database — that the nn.ru directory described in the words "a professional club of firms dealing in computers and hi-tech"[6].

The Nizhny Novgorod component appears in the snapshots as one of seven cities in the switcher: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Omsk, and an "other city" option[1]. A note at the bottom of the 2012 page stated that the portal gathered price information "in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd and other Russian cities," and that search allowed specifying a city district[3]. There is no dedicated Nizhny Novgorod layout, address, or phone number with a local area code in the surviving home-page texts — the regional element was limited to the city switcher and the "Firm directory"[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered the Nizhny Novgorod Internet as a local showcase of a federal service: it was listed in the nn.ru site directory with a description promising information on firms in Nizhny Novgorod[6]. At the same time, in the rating samples we collected from Counter.nn.ru no ranking is recorded for it, and in the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote from 2004, neither price.ru nor nn.price.ru is listed[7]. For comparative context on city counters and votes, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The 2011 snapshots preserve a transitional state: at the top of the page hung the line "The old version of price.ru is still here" and a link "Old Price.ru" — the portal was migrating to a new engine[1]. By April 2012 the link to the old version had disappeared from the header, but a "Price.ru Assistant," an RSS export of market news, and a line "Find us on Twitter, Facebook, VKontakte" had appeared[4]. The last web archive snapshot of the address is dated April 28, 2012[5]; at the time this survey was compiled, the domain nn.price.ru was not responding. The service's city subdomains fell out of use, while the price.ru project itself continued to exist afterward — but the Nizhny Novgorod address once listed in the nn.ru directory now survives only in archived copies.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2011 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, April 2011 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2012 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, April 2012 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Snapshots of nn.price.ru in the web archive (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru site directory, /rub/ section (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)