infogroup.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod search system for companies, goods, and prices, operating under the brand "Prices, Goods, Services"; page footers carried the signature "Infogroup"[1]. As its card in the nn.ru site catalog put it, the directory collected "goods, addresses, phone numbers of firms of Nizhny Novgorod and the region" — 8,000 firms and 15,000 product listings[2]. The earliest snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated January 24, 2001[3], and the latest snapshot in our sample is from November 7, 2018[4].

The "weekly catalog": the site of the mid-2000s

The snapshot from November 21, 2008 shows a directory built around two search functions. The top menu consisted of the sections "Product Search," "Company Search," "Advertising Placement," "News," "Partners," "Promotions," "Contacts," and "Connection"[1]. Below the search form was a note reading "weekly catalog" and a database-currency date of November 20, 2008 — the day before the capture: the data was updated once a week[1].

The entire home page was taken up by a product rubricator of about twenty sections: "Security, protective equipment," "Household appliances," "Auto parts," "Interior," "Commercial real estate," "Computers and components," "Cosmetics," "Equipment, components, raw materials," "Clothing, footwear," "Office equipment," "Printers," "Software," "Food products," "Advertising, printing," "Communication equipment," "Building materials, plumbing," "Consumer goods," "Transport," "Services. Classifieds. Buying," "Household goods"[1]. The subsections preserved the commercial vocabulary of the era: "Floppy disks, CDs, MO discs, cassettes," "Typewriters, ribbons for them," "Radio stations, radio paging systems," "Cartridges for copying machines," "Cross-connect equipment and protection of telephone lines"[1]. At the bottom of the page was the signature "Infogroup PRICES, GOODS, SERVICES" and the copyright notice "1999—2008"[1].

The second site: a company rubricator, "I am a buyer," and articles for entrepreneurs

By June 2013 the site had been completely redone. The main menu now consisted of the items "Home," "Company Rubricator," "Product Rubricator," "Start a Business," and "Personal Account"; RSS feeds appeared, along with a materials section covering "About Us," "Promotions," "Services and Prices," "Editorial News," "Partners," "Contacts," and "Questionnaire"[5]. The product rubricator had been replaced by a company one — nineteen sections, from "Auto" and "Banks. Finance. Insurance" to "Transport. Logistics. Shipping" and "Services for the public"[5]. The company search form offered filters by company name, category, description of activity, contact, locality, and city district[5].

The terms of free listing were spelled out right on the home page: two categories with a description of up to 150 characters each, one email address, one website, two phone numbers, two divisions, and two addresses; publication required filling out a questionnaire[5][6]. Advertising was to be ordered by phone at 270-5555, with the support address infogroup@infogroup.ru[5].

Besides the directory, the site ran its own section of business articles with commentary from practitioners — the home page displayed a counter reading "Page 1 of 49"[5]. The showcase featured the piece "A Business for Sale," featuring private entrepreneur Alexander Zhdanov, dated January 22, 2013; "Power Source," featuring Elena Gornova, executive director of OOO Pechka, dated November 21, 2012; and "Can a Driving School Pay Off?," featuring Vladimir Viktorovich Gubarev, director of the Kit-NN driving school, dated October 30, 2012; among other headlines were "How to Open a Pawnshop?," "A Mushroom Spot," "Opening a Country Hotel," and "The Gallant Profit of Haberdashers"[5]. The footer signature read "© Infogroup Prices, Goods, Services 1993—2011" — meaning the editors themselves dated the project's history back to 1993[5].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The project entered local catalogs earlier than the date of the first saved snapshot of its home page. In the nn.ru rubricator, in the "Mass Media: Internet Media" section, as of June 4, 2000, there was a line "Prices, Goods, Services — the Volga Region" with the address infogroup.ru and the description: "Databases of the 'Prices, Goods, Services' information group, an association of regional reference publications. The databases contain more than 15,000 offers from firms of the Volga region"; the resource was marked as operational, with a check date of February 17, 2000[7].

Later the site carried the Counter.nn.ru counter under number 2229, and its readings are visible in the nn.ru catalog[2]. In the "Mass Media: Newspapers and Magazines" section on April 8, 2002, the "Search system for firms of Nizhny Novgorod" opened the rating-sorted list, with a rating of 482.1[2]. In the rubricator's "popular resources" summary of April 25, 2002, the site ranked eleventh by number of click-throughs from the catalog — 594 click-throughs with a rating of 486.19[8]. At the same time it was also listed in another section — "Directories and Search Systems: Address and Phone Directories" — where on June 3, 2002 it ranked first with a rating of 326.84[9]. By September 24, 2003 its rating in the "Newspapers and Magazines" section stood at 1000 — second place after the site "PRICER" with 1319[10]. For more on the rating measure itself, see the article Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating; on the environment as a whole, see Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

How it stopped

Judging by the snapshots, the site's updates stopped in early 2013, while the page itself kept hanging around for at least five more years. The snapshots from November 7, 2014 and November 7, 2018 are textually identical to each other[6][4], and differ from the snapshot of June 9, 2013 only in the wording of the advertising banner ("Advertising in another region," "New firms this way!!!" were replaced with "Real payback in 1 year") and in an added phrase about the questionnaire in the description of free services[5]. The most recent article on the showcase in all three snapshots dates to January 22, 2013, and the copyright notice remained "1993—2011"[4].

A check made while preparing this article (August 2026) showed that the domain name infogroup.ru remains delegated to Yandex name servers, but there is no site address in the domain name system and it does not respond over HTTP: the directory no longer exists at this address.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Mass Media: Newspapers and Magazines" section, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2018 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Mass Media: Internet Media" section, 2000 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — "Popular resources" of the nn.ru rubricator, 2002 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Address and Phone Directories" section, 2002 (archive)
  10. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Mass Media: Newspapers and Magazines" section, 2003 (archive)